After almost winning the Premier League last season, before they were eventually (if inevitably) pipped by the Manchester City juggernaut, Mikel Arteta’s patient rebuilding of Arsenal has entered a new, more urgent phase.
The club’s massive spending on the transfer market — upwards of £200 million at this point — is a screaming-from-the-rooftop announcement of its ambitions. In the last couple of weeks, they have got Kai Havertz from Chelsea, to bolster their strike capabilities; Jurrien Timber from Ajax to
After almost winning the Premier League last season, before they were eventually (if inevitably) pipped by the Manchester City juggernaut, Mikel Arteta’s patient rebuilding of Arsenal has entered a new, more urgent phase.
The club’s massive spending on the transfer market — upwards of £200 million at this point — is a screaming-from-the-rooftop announcement of its ambitions. In the last couple of weeks, they have got Kai Havertz from Chelsea, to bolster their strike capabilities; Jurrien Timber from Ajax to give Arteta yet another option in an already robust defence (squad depth is of critical importance, especially since Arsenal are back in the Champions League), and, potentially, a player that can win them everything, in Declan Rice.
Full disclosure: I am an Arsenal fan, one of those eternal optimists who believes that every season will be Arsenal’s, until that point in the season when it becomes impossible to ignore the evidence to the contrary.
The signing of Rice, therefore, makes me want to break into song. The next Patrick Vieira, Kevin De Bruyne and Rodri rolled into one!
Even in the sober light of statistics and reason, Rice would be a great signing for any big club. Last season, there was no player in the Premier League who dispossessed the opposition in attack more than he did. The 24-year-old English playmaker doesn’t stop at winning the ball; he has the confidence, pace and skill to then turn and drive into the opposition’s final third. It’s one of football’s rarest and most important skills: the ability to turn defence into attack. Rice could be to Arsenal what Casemiro is to Manchester United. What Rodri is to City.
The reason this is such a rare and coveted ability in football is because a deep-lying playmaker needs to be a master of pretty much every skill needed on the pitch (except goalkeeping). They must have solid defensive skills — positioning, tackling, intercepting. If they are to carry the ball once they have taken it, they need exceptional pace and acceleration, and excellent dribbling skills.
To do all these things, they must also be brilliant readers of the game and know, at all times, where the spaces are, and what route the opponent is most likely to take; they must have a sense of which teammate in the best position to carry a break forward.
And they must also possess that beating heart of football: the ability to pass. Rice’s 88% pass accuracy last season makes him a metronome. He is in the top 10 globally for most passes and most passes into the final third. The man can play short passes to build a game all day long, but also thread in that deadly throughball, change the direction of play with a long dink, or participate in a quickfire 1-2.
The Arsenal midfielder Thomas Partey is a player very much in the mould of Rice, and together they could form a twin-cylinder engine to power the team to silverware (though there is talk of Partey leaving the club in this transfer window).
There is just one catch: the curse of the big-money transfer. Of the handful of footballers in history whose transfer fees have hit or crossed £100 million, nearly all have failed spectacularly just after (some, to find redemption after leaving the club that bought them for that price). Think of Philippe Coutinho’s disastrous Barcelona stint, Romelu Lukaku’s fractious time at Chelsea, Ousmane Dembele’s underwhelming performances at Barcelona, the Paul Pogba or Harry Maguire trainwrecks at Manchester United, and Eden Hazard’s arc from one of the best footballers in the world to someone who could barely last five minutes on the pitch, after his move from Chelsea to Real Madrid.
Rice has been signed for £105 million. Perhaps, just this once, the curse will not hold.
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