Declan Rice: My game in my words

Declan Rice isn’t talking about being 6ft 1in when he mentions his “good height” on the pitch.

Instead, the England international is referring to a subtle change to his positioning as a No 6 when he plays as the midfield pivot for Arsenal.

On a Monday afternoon at Arsenal’s training ground in London Colney, Rice is scrolling through clips — more than 80 of them, put together by The Athletic — as he reflects on his evolution as a footballer since leaving West Ham in a £105million ($130m) club-record transfer last summer.

The time it takes to learn a new game model after moving clubs is easy to overlook but it says everything about Rice’s ability and intelligence as a footballer that he can clearly articulate, as well as execute, exactly what is asked of him under the management of Mikel Arteta.

Pressing pause one minute and rewind the next, the 25-year-old breaks down his game in fascinating detail as he speaks candidly about his adaptation to life as an Arsenal player.

He explains why “short relationships” are the way forward for him at Arsenal as opposed to long diagonals, outlines the nuances of the No 8 role that he has been learning on the job, discusses the challenge of coming up against Rodri and beating Manchester City’s press, and describes what it feels like to make a tackle at the Emirates that “sets the crowd on fire”.

(Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)

But perhaps the best insight into Rice’s mindset and his constant desire to improve is how he asks to rewatch a misplaced pass against Chelsea rather than a brilliant ball against Fulham that breaks the lines and takes out four opposition players.

This is Declan Rice’s game in his words…

Crystal Palace away on a Monday night. Rice is making his second league appearance for Arsenal and running the game.

His role in the build-up is pivotal, typified by a passage of play in the 22nd minute, when he forms a triangle on the edge of his own penalty area with Aaron Ramsdale and William Saliba that ends with him releasing Thomas Partey on the right. Rice’s movement is excellent.

Is that intuitive or coached?

“That’s coached every day, depending on the opposition and how they set up against us,” Rice says. “So we’ll watch clips and see how they press and whether they go man-to-man or whether they sit off. The key is always about finding the free man.

“If you go back to the start of the clip, I’m only able (to receive) because (Odsonne) Edouard has jumped. If (Eberechi) Eze had jumped, I wouldn’t have had that line of pass to Saliba. It’s because Edouard has closed the line off that I can now make the run to give the ball to the free player. And then it’s just about being patient. So my timing is off when Edouard is running towards the keeper – I know (Ramsdale) is about to give me that ball because Edouard is sprinting at him.”

And what about the next phase?

“I just saw there was loads of space and two people (Edouard and Eze) attracted to the ball, so I split them and then I’m free again.”

Rice makes it sound easy. In reality, a player in his position is making split-second decisions in response to when and where the opposition move and in an area of the pitch where a mistake could be calamitous.

Later in the first half, in a much more advanced area, Rice runs off the back of Eze again to set up a chance for Eddie Nketiah. It’s surprising to see Rice so far forward.

Does he have the freedom to take up those positions?

Rice smiles. “I would never have done this before. I probably only learnt this about two or three weeks earlier.

“So when (Bukayo) Saka gets the ball, that space there is occupied by no one,” he explains, pointing to an area that has opened up in front of him (shown in the first image below).

“And it’s happened a lot this season where I make that run into there and you’re free.

“The manager calls it playing in a ‘good height’. If I’m back here (much deeper), we can’t progress the play. We’d end up going back to Ben (White) and back to the centre-half. So that’s why he says he wants his No 6s to always be in ‘good height’.

“Obviously, I’ve then read the moment, stepped onto it and slipped in Eddie. It looks very simple but it’s quite a thought process that goes into it.”

During Arteta’s sales pitch last summer, he gave Rice a detailed explanation of how and where he saw him playing for Arsenal, which included both the No 6 and the No 8 role.

“He said that you have goalscoring capabilities and capabilities to make assists and make things happen,” Rice recalls. “But obviously he knew my biggest strength was probably playing No 6.”

The challenge for Rice after he signed was to put Arteta’s vision into practice as quickly as possible. To help with that process, he had regular tactical meetings with Arteta and the rest of the coaching team during pre-season to learn Arsenal’s game model.

(Marc Atkins/Getty Images)

Rice smiles as he listens to an extract from an article in The Athletic about that stage of his Arsenal career. It references how impressed the coaching staff were with the speed at which he grasped what they wanted from him and also the fact that he could answer questions quickly when quizzed about match footage.

The latter line makes him sound like a contestant on Mastermind — does he still get quizzed in this way?

Rice laughs. “Yeah, we always get asked,” he says. “Still to this day — and in front of the group.

“He’ll ask us to break things down, like in terms of our pressing and where we should go: ‘If that person drops, who goes there?’. Sometimes you feel a little bit on the spot because you don’t know the answer.

“But my main thing (around adaptation) was in pre-season when I’d obviously just got there and was trying to gain fitness. We played against Man United and I didn’t have the best of games. I wasn’t really that fit. And that was when we really tried to play our game model and you could just see I was way out of depth. I didn’t really understand anything that was going on.

(Al Bello/Getty Images)

“There were some good moments when I was trying to learn it, but there were also some moments where you could see I needed to improve a lot. After that, I watched a lot of videos and then on the training field tried to really improve. I think that game (against United) was a real catalyst to helping me out.”

Progress was swift. By the time that Arsenal travelled to Everton in the middle of September, Rice looked totally comfortable with the principles behind their passing and movement patterns.

A passage of play in the first half at Goodison Park, involving Martin Odegaard, Saka, White and Rice, feels like a trademark Arsenal move.

When Rice takes possession from Saka, he receives on his left foot and shapes to take the ball to that side of the pitch. He could, in theory, clip a ball towards the back post. Instead, he drops his shoulder, shifts the ball with the outside of his right foot and goes back into the same area where Arsenal have just come from, feeding White in space.

“We’re really big on playing ‘same side’ and work on it,” Rice says.

“We’re going to have an overload because there’s two players here,” he continues, pointing to White and Saka. “I know Saka has taken him (Dwight McNeil) in and Ben is on the overlap.

“Odegaard’s marked by the full-back (Vitaliy Mykolenko), obviously I’m on the ball and pass to Ben and he gets in and puts in a cross.

“But just that fake to initially go one way, ready to take it back the other side, it shifts everyone. So that’s why you see us as a team do that quite a lot.”

Another clip from the Everton game leads to a fascinating discussion about an area of Rice’s game that has fundamentally changed at Arsenal.

The video starts with Rice passing to Saka on the right, before stepping forward to arrow a left-footed diagonal to the opposite flank.

“See, again here, I’m in that height that the manager talks about,” Rice says. “So once I’ve played that pass (to Saka), I reckon the old me would have just waited behind the ball, sat and held, and let the winger go one-v-one — but, instead, I run off the Everton striker (Beto), in a good height, and can then receive and play.”

That adjustment to his positioning is interesting, yet it’s how that phase of play finishes — a diagonal to Trossard — that signifies arguably the biggest shift in Rice’s game since joining Arsenal.

Although Rice switches to the flanks occasionally at Arsenal with a long diagonal (we watch footage of him striking some beautiful balls off either foot this season), it is a type of pass that he rarely plays compared to when he was at West Ham.

The plan was to show Rice a graph to highlight that point, but he is one step ahead.

“The manager doesn’t like diagonals, really,” Rice says.

“He does like diagonals if you’re going to gain an advantage from it. But you see that one I’ve just played to Saka (against Brighton), people will go, ‘That’s a great ball’, but let me rewind the clip and pause it.

“Look, Saka doesn’t have anyone to play inside to and he’s got another Brighton player coming over.

“So if it’s there to hit and it gives you an advantage, you hit it, of course. But if it doesn’t, he’d rather you play short relationships, let them come onto you, and play around them to then create the space for him (the winger).”

It’s an interesting debate within the game. In 2014, Colm McMullan, the creator of the Opta-powered Stats Zone app, delivered a presentation at the first ever Opta Forum, backed up by his own research, titled ‘Please stop applauding diagonal cross-field passes’.

For some teams, especially those who like to play on the counter-attack, big switches of play can be hugely effective. That was certainly the case when Rice was playing under David Moyes at West Ham, where he was encouraged to ping long, raking diagonals from in to out as much as possible.

The difference at Arsenal is night and day when you see it on a graph.

“Yeah,” Rice says, nodding and smiling as he looks at the data.

“At West Ham last year, I was playing so many passes long. But that was our style. Moyes loved me dropping into ‘false full-back’ (on the left) because I could then cut inside and hit the opposite side. And, as you can see (on the graph), loads of passes going out to that right side – that was a big theme for me and (Vladimir) Coufal, and (Jarrod) Bowen, having that relationship where, if I get it, for Coufal to go. I used to hit that zone a lot.”

(The Athletic)

Rice turns his attention to the graph that shows his “switch passes” at Arsenal. “How many is that?” he asks smiling, before starting to count them. “You can tell, that’s just the way that our game model is – it isn’t really set up for the long diagonals. Unless it gives you an advantage.”

As well as playing higher up the pitch at Arsenal and passing shorter, Rice has built up an excellent understanding with one team-mate in particular.

The slide before the next set of clips is titled ‘Odegaard’, and I ask Rice if he can imagine what the footage is going to show. His reply catches me slightly off guard. “Passes that people say I don’t play enough of,” he says.

Whether that is the perception of Rice or not, the reality is there are plenty of examples of him passing between the lines for Arsenal, zipping balls into the feet of Odegaard with a mixture of pace and disguise, but also into Saka and Leandro Trossard too.

It is no different with England, where he connects with Jude Bellingham and Phil Foden in a similar way.

“People don’t think I play these passes,” Rice says. “But every time I get the opportunity to rap that pass in, I do it. When I get into that position and get into that space, I love playing those passes.”

The art of passing

Before looking at Rice’s goals and assists this season, and the transition to playing as a No 8 at times, there is one more build-up scenario to discuss. It is from Arsenal’s 1-0 victory over Manchester City in October.

Set up in an aggressive man-for-man press, City were determined to deny David Raya a ‘free’ pass to any of the Arsenal players. In fact, the Arsenal goalkeeper ended up with the ball at his feet for 23 seconds in this phase of play. The challenge for Arteta’s players was to find a solution without Raya being forced to kick long.

After initially taking up a position wide on the left, Rice eventually comes infield as Raya, with his studs on top of the ball, continues to edge forward. Rice then rotates with Jorginho, leaving Mateo Kovacic momentarily caught between the two Arsenal midfielders, and runs onto a pass from Raya.

Kovacic ended up bringing him down and was fortunate to avoid a second yellow card, but the way that Rice and Jorginho worked in tandem to beat City’s press was clever.

“I’m hoping that Rico Lewis is going to jump (to Raya), so that I can then make a move,” Rice explains.

“It’s kind of like a game of chess.

“Lewis is actually in a good position there because he’s defending two of us (Gabriel and Rice). When I move off him, he’s got a problem obviously with Jorgi going the other way.

“We work on that a lot – our midfielders working on different lines and working in relation to one another. So if one moves one way, the other moves the other way and mostly diagonally. And, as you can see in that clip, that’s what happened. But I remember this game, it was hard to play out because Rico Lewis was taking up some really tough positions where he’s almost doing two roles.”

Rice’s face is beaming.

“It’s nuts,” he says, smiling. “Hard to explain — but it’s our job, isn’t it? By the next day, it’s forgotten. By that night, I’d probably chilled out. But in that moment it was unbelievable and for probably the next hour and a half I was buzzing.”

Rice is talking about the emotions he experienced after scoring his first goal for Arsenal, to give them the lead in the 96th minute against Manchester United. It was early September, the Emirates Stadium was bathed in sunshine and, in the words of Sky Sports pundit Gary Neville, the Arsenal fans had “a new hero”.

Declan's first Gunners goal ❤️ https://t.co/t3smdK5Exu pic.twitter.com/m86eGv58io

— Arsenal (@Arsenal) October 14, 2023

For Rice, it must have felt like the day that he properly introduced himself to the club’s supporters. “Yeah, definitely,” he says smiling as he watches the wild celebrations that followed. “That goal was insane, just how it happened. Just because it was against United, 96th minute. It was crazy. Incredible.”

Neville made another comment afterwards: “That’s why they paid the money. Big moments, big matches.”

Asked for his thoughts on that remark, Rice pauses for a moment and then replies: “Yeah… not yesterday!”

For context, we are talking less than 24 hours after the 2-0 home defeat against Aston Villa on April 14 that saw Arsenal surrender their lead at the top of the Premier League.

Experience tells me that some players would have cancelled an interview that was taking place the next day. Others wouldn’t be so frank about their own performance.

Rice, however, is not the sort to hide.

(Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)

“The way that he wants to learn and take positive criticism is really powerful,” Arteta said a few months ago.

In truth, there has been little to criticise Rice for this season. His impact on this Arsenal team has been there for all to see.

“In the big games against the big clubs, I’ve played really well and, as a club, we’ve collected a really good number of points in those matches,” Rice says, picking up on Neville’s comment again and referring to Arsenal’s matches against Manchester City and Liverpool in particular. “In those games, you always want to stand up and be counted.”

Liverpool away was a match that Rice particularly enjoyed. “The way they play, the football they play, it’s like a chaos game that they create. Balls in behind from Trent Alexander-Arnold constantly, picking up the second balls, re-delivering, second phase, third phase, fourth phase — they’re just relentless at it. And at Anfield, especially the Kop end, goals get sucked in. But that game I absolutely loved.”

That 1-1 draw at Liverpool also featured a bizarre breakaway and the closest thing to a running race on a football pitch since John Williams won the Rumbelows Sprint Challenge at Wembley in 1992.

From an Arsenal corner, Liverpool launched a counter-attack that ended with Rice being outnumbered four to one. Mohamed Salah was leading the cavalry.

“Oh, mate. It was crazy. Nuts!” Rice says, smiling as the footage comes on the screen.

Liverpool RATTLE the crossbar! pic.twitter.com/wVhhgp56aY

— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) December 23, 2023

“When I’m backing off, I’m literally thinking, ‘Oh no!’.”

Trying to make sense of a situation that makes no sense at all, Rice adds: “I know Saliba is on my right.”

In fact, Saliba, in lane 1, outsprints Darwin Nunez, which is easy to overlook.

“He’s rapid,” Rice says about the Arsenal defender.

Salah, however, still had three Liverpool players to his right.

(Premier League)

“I’m thinking there’s a good chance he doesn’t even want to pass and he’s going to go on his own,” Rice adds. “So I’m just waiting for him to come one-versus-one against me. But, watching it back… look, I took a step and stopped,” he says, highlighting a slight moment of hesitation that others almost certainly wouldn’t pick up.

“I wish I’d gone earlier because I would have blocked the shot. One hundred per cent.”

But if Rice had stepped across sooner, maybe Salah would have gone on his outside? “Nah, because I think he had his head down,” Rice says.

“You’ve just got to delay for as long as possible. That was my main thing: delay.”

Salah slipped the ball to Alexander-Arnold outside him, who rattled a shot against the crossbar.

By now, Rice had three Premier League goals to his name, including an impressive first-time finish from distance against Chelsea, after he pounced on a stray pass by the Chelsea goalkeeper Robert Sanchez, and a dramatic stoppage-time winner at Luton. “Bonkers,” he says about the latter.

ARSENAL WIN IT AT THE DEATH!

Declan Rice converts Martin Odegaard's cross to seal the victory for the Gunners! 🔴#PLonPrime #LUTARS pic.twitter.com/DvvJQT1qP8

— Amazon Prime Video Sport (@primevideosport) December 5, 2023

His goal against Chelsea was key to Arsenal recovering from a sluggish start to earn a point. Rice felt partly responsible for that poor opening and reprimanded himself in a post-match interview for giving the ball away to Cole Palmer in the second minute.

It’s easy to sit with a player and show them clips of everything going well, but I’m intrigued to know how, mentally, Rice deals with making a bad mistake, especially when it happens early on.

“My head was gone. Straight away it was gone,” Rice says, watching the clip back.

He asks to see it again. “You always want to start off games well by doing the basics well, so your passing, for instance. If that pass makes it, it builds your confidence. But that pass… it’s just weak. Poor connection, timing with the ball – it’s terrible.

“My head wasn’t gone. But obviously, I’m running back thinking, ‘Please don’t score’.

“Then, once it broke down, I thought, ‘Thank God for that. Wake up a little bit’. Then it’s just about being confident with the phases of play that you have, and I actually went on to have a really good game in this one.”

Rice had an even better game when he scored his fourth goal of the season for Arsenal, in an emphatic 6-0 away win at his former club West Ham United that also featured two set-piece assists.

His dead-ball delivery has added another string to his bow this season and came about following a conversation with Arteta and Nicolas Jover, Arsenal’s set-piece coach, midway through the season. As well as those two assists at West Ham, Rice has set up goals from corners against Palace, Newcastle and, most recently, in the 3-2 victory at Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday.

GO DEEPER

Analysed: Arsenal's top 10 set-piece routines under Nicolas Jover

“They (Arteta and Jover) just said to me, ‘You can put the ball anywhere you want. You have the ability to go far, go short’. And I was like, ‘Yeah, let’s just try something’. Obviously, I got the assist against Palace and I’ve stayed on them since.”

Gabriel converted that corner against Palace with a towering header.

A perfect afternoon at Emirates Stadium 🤩

All the highlights in one place 👇 pic.twitter.com/9pZwcZATJl

— Arsenal (@Arsenal) January 20, 2024

“If you watched him (Gabriel) train, he scores about three of them a day,” Rice says. “He’s so aggressive. We play against the kids, he doesn’t care. It’s like he’s playing in a Premier League match. He scores goals for fun in training. No wonder he does it in games.”

And what about Rice’s goal against West Ham — where does that rank on his list? “It’s up there, for sure, but I’ve scored one or two that have been better. The Europa Conference League goal against Gent last season is No 1. And I also scored one for West Ham against Watford, against Ben Foster, and whipped it.

“But I love this type of shot, it’s my favourite.

“When the ball is set back, to reverse it with whip and pace, it’s so hard to stop if it’s on target. It was a lovely goal.”

(Premier League)

He was playing in the No 6 role against West Ham, but his next goal, against Sheffield United in March, came as a No 8, sparking a conversation about Rice’s best position.

Jorginho’s inclusion in the team tends to allow him to operate further forward, as was the case in the home games against Newcastle and Brentford, where Rice had a lot of joy drifting out to the left and carrying Arsenal up the pitch.

Where does he believe he contributes most? “No 6. Definitely,” Rice says.

“But when the game is open, like Brentford and Newcastle, I can easily play No 8 because I love to drive forward with the ball. When I’m free like that… I love that.”

With his long stride and power, Rice eats up the ground, leaving a trail of players in his wake and transitioning defence into attack in the blink of an eye.

Naturally, there were more opportunities to do that at West Ham because of their style of play, but Arsenal fans have been treated to those dynamic bursts too.

“This is the best one,” says Rice as he goes through the gears in the Champions League game in Sevilla.

Other aspects of playing further forward in midfield have been totally alien to Rice.

“With No 8, the manager is massive on making runs (off the ball), threatening behind, occupying zones, and that’s unnatural to me — I’ve never done that in my life, so it’s my first year learning that, which has been really different,” he explains.

His goal against Sheffield United talks to that point.

"A side, who can't stop scoring in record-breaking fashion" 💥

Declan Rice makes it FIVE for Arsenal 🔥 pic.twitter.com/71I8u7cs6j

— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) March 4, 2024

Rice made three separate runs to get the ball: first from White, then from Odegaard and finally from Saka.

Did he expect White to cross when he made that initial run into the penalty area?

“Probably not,” Rice replies.

“This one, I thought he would have played me,” Rice adds as we watch him coming towards Odegaard (image three above) to receive.

Rice immediately spins in search of a third opportunity and is rewarded for his persistence. Crucially, he puts the brakes on just as Saka prepares to cross, and then sweeps home.

“Because the defender is going to drop (towards goal), I just hold my run,” Rice explains. “Saka said to me he was going to put it across the box but, luckily enough, I shouted to him, ‘Cutback!’.”

By that point in the game, Rice already had an assist to his name too – well, at least he did in his own mind. Those who sit in judgement saw it differently. “I was fuming. I was going to get them to email!” he says about the cross to Odegaard that took a slight deflection.

The part that Rice played in that Odegaard goal features three key components of No 8 play that Arteta has talked to him about: arriving in the box, body orientation and turning in pockets.

“If you pause it, already you know that something good is going to come from this because we’ve got an overload,” Rice says.

“He (Jayden Bogle) is not going to press (Gabriel) Martinelli because he’s in the pocket.

“And who’s marking me now?”

Nobody is the answer.

“I’m playing off the back of him (Bogle), so he doesn’t know I’m there. The centre half has been dragged out of his position, and this guy (Vinicius Souza, marking Odegaard) is sleeping.

“It seems easy. But we work on that all the time, just gaining advantages around the box and realising where the spare player is.”

With or without the assist, it was another productive night for Rice and led to Jamie Carragher, the Sky Sports pundit, praising him afterwards on Monday Night Football — or maybe that should be defending him.

“There used to be criticism of Declan Rice in that he can’t be a great midfielder because he doesn’t score enough goals…. I always felt he had the ability to do that and so did his manager,” Carragher said.

Roy Keane was among those to say that Rice didn’t score or assist enough at West Ham, even though he was often playing in a deep-lying midfield role.

Did Rice, who has registered six goals and seven assists in the Premier League this season, think the criticism of his scoring record was fair?

“No, not really,” he replies. “Because Roy Keane, (Graeme) Souness, (Jamie) Redknapp, people that talk about my goalscoring ability, if you looked at their goals, they didn’t score hundreds in their career. But they’re remembered for what they did as midfield players: Roy Keane breaking up play, being a hard-tackling midfielder, won loads of titles for United. The same with Souness. So I don’t know why when it comes to me it’s all about goals, because it’s never been my game.

“But since I’ve been scoring, no one has said anything!”

Two questions.

First, is tackling an art? “I would say so,” Rice replies.

Second, does Rice, to coin a phrase, love a tackle? “Yeah,” he says with a smile. “But people tackle recklessly. I know about timing, about when to tackle, it’s about patience and knowing when I can get there and when I can’t. If I can’t get there, I’ll just try to delay.”

Rice’s out-of-possession work — pressing, interceptions, tackling, ball recovery — has always been hugely impressive.

In the Community Shield against Manchester City, he gave Arsenal fans a taste of what was to come when he chased back to rob Bernardo Silva of the ball.

A few weeks later, in the early stages of the 3-1 victory over Manchester United, Rice made a terrific challenge on Bruno Fernandes that ignited the home supporters — Arsenal fans were on their feet punching the air when he won the ball.

“We speak about that before every game — a big tackle sets the crowd on fire,” Rice says.

Football has changed a lot over the last 20-30 years, but there’s still a sense that supporters like nothing more than seeing one of their players making a fully-committed challenge. “Oh, I know, 100 per cent, “Rice says. “I made another on (Victor) Lindelof about two minutes afterwards, and they (the Arsenal fans) were buzzing off that.”

Right on cue, that footage (clip 2 below) comes on screen. “He got crunched,” Rice says matter-of-factly.

Can he hear the crowd’s reaction to his tackle on Lindelof, or is he in too much of a zone? “No, no, you hear it,” Rice says. “It’s weird — it gives you the biggest uplift. It feels like it gives you more energy.”

We have been talking for the best part of an hour now and it’s clear that Rice has a remarkable capacity to remember anything and everything from matches.

A clip of him making an excellent tackle from behind on Matheus Nunes, in the 1-0 win over Manchester City, transports Rice back in time to a challenge he made six years ago, when he was a teenager.

“There’s one I did on (Aaron) Wan-Bissaka, in about 2018, and I made that exact tackle but at the other end of the pitch and came away with the ball. Literally a carbon copy.”

He’s right. The resemblance is uncanny.

The moments that go unnoticed… but not by us. @_DeclanRice 👏 pic.twitter.com/Cf5PvDXT0j

— West Ham United (@WestHam) December 11, 2018

Both are brilliant challenges but also unusual. “I always go to one knee, don’t I, and win the ball? I don’t know how,” Rice says. “But it’s effective and it works.”

As well as enjoying making tackles, Rice has always excelled when it comes to interceptions. Last season, he made more interceptions than anyone in the Premier League.

“They’re down this year, though, aren’t they?” Rice says.

His numbers are lower if we look purely at the raw data, but that’s to be expected given that Rice now plays for a team that dominates possession. If the number of interceptions he makes is adjusted to account for every 1,000 opponent touches, providing a more level playing field, there is barely any change compared with last season.

Rice is a key figure in Arsenal’s aggressive pressing — an out-of-possession game model that Arteta describes as “not allowing the opponent to breathe”.

Earlier in our conversation, when we were watching a passage of attacking play at Goodison Park, a loose pass from Oleksandr Zinchenko allowed Everton to break. Arsenal won the ball back almost instantly, however, through an interception from Rice.

“Counter-pressing,” Rice says. “He (the manager) is massive on that.

“‘Men up the pitch’, he calls it. As soon as you lose the ball, head down, sprint back as fast as you can and get back into position. He’s drilled that mentality into everyone.”

That sounds like it would be right up Rice’s street anyway, bearing in mind he loves hunting down opponents. “Definitely,” he says. “That’s where I do my best work.”

Interestingly, when the clips were first being put together for this interview, Rice was still a West Ham player and some of the footage featured him aggressively pressing a midfielder who is now a team-mate. As soon as last season’s 2-2 draw against Arsenal is mentioned, Rice knows the player in question.

“Against Partey,” he replies.

“That wasn’t planned. You always get a feel, a trigger, for when to jump onto someone, whether someone has played a bad pass back or there is a chance to squeeze the line, and in that instance the ball got rolled slowly to him and I was just up his back, really.”

Rice is in his element in those situations. He often holds off from getting too tight to his opponent initially, almost as if he is inviting the pass, and then arrives at pace, typically on the player’s blind side.

His physicality helps in those duels but anticipation is his biggest asset.

“I’m already reading the situation two steps before,” Rice says as we watch footage of him dispossessing Brighton’s Joao Pedro and the Wolves midfielder Jean-Ricner Bellegarde. “Those straight passes, I love them because I can just step in front.”

Another of those passes is about to follow, this time to Newcastle’s Sean Longstaff. Rice is all over the midfielder in an area where Arsenal pose an immediate threat.

“The other thing there is that the centre-back (Sven Botman) delayed it so much that it kind of killed Longstaff,” Rice says. “I’m already on the move towards him, he (Botman) should see that. I’ve got the momentum — he (Longstaff) is slowing down and I’m quickening up.”

A final example features him closing down Rodri in the Community Shield, forcing the Manchester City midfielder into a mistake that led to an Arsenal corner. “It’s probably a foul, to be honest with you,” Rice says.

How does he find going up against Rodri?

“Good. I enjoy it,” he replies.

“We’re different players, I feel.

“With Rodri, he was born in Spain, he’s always been a natural No 6. You can just tell by the way he plays that he’s worked under Pep (Guardiola) for so long. He’s a lot more structured than I am. I’d say I’m a lot more off-the-cuff. Obviously, this season I’ve been more structured. But in terms of the way I play, I feel like… being free a little bit more.

(David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)

“There are different things that we complement each other on — but no doubt, he’s the best in the world.”

It seems strange to think that Rice could have ended up playing alongside Rodri this season.

“I know,” he replies, smiling.

“But this project seemed more exciting and that’s why I chose to come to Arsenal, because I believe we’re on to big things here.”

(Additional contributor: Mark Carey)

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: John Bradford)