Mikel Arteta was full of warm words for Declan Rice after the Football Writers’ Association revealed the England international had placed second in their annual Player of the Year awards.
The midfielder has enjoyed a stellar debut season at the Emirates splitting his time between the number 6 and number 8 positions as Arsenal have mounted a second successive challenge to Manchester City’s dominance.
Despite arriving for a club-record £100 million fee, Rice has somehow worn the price tag lightly.
Across 48 appearances, he’s scored six goals and made nine assists – his best ever tally since breaking through ranks at West Ham – leading Gunners supporters to taunt his former club that they sold him half price.
“He’s been great. He’s had such an impact from day one,” said Arteta when asked about this morning’s result in his pre-Bournemouth press conference.
“It’s not easy when you come from a club that you’ve been at for a long time, but he settled really good.
“It’s a great group and I think they’ve been really supportive with him as well. There are players that just come in and glide and become part of it straight away.
“I remember a conversation I had with him when we were still in the US in pre-season and he was [with us for] eight, nine days, and he said ‘it feels like I’ve been here for two years.’ That’s a good sign.”
After Arsenal’s recent defeat to Aston Villa, Rice sat down with The Athletic to discuss his tactical evolution since moving to N5. He spoke in remarkable detail, opening up on the nuances of Arteta’s philosophy.
When it was put to the Spaniard that his summer signing is a particularly ‘coachable’ player, he agreed.
“Yes, that’s the right word. He’s really enthusiastic, eyes open, ears open, very willing to learn and take information,” said Arteta.
“On top of that as well, you need to absorb an enormous amount of responsibility and expectations and that’s a difficult back sometimes to carry.
“He’s done it in a really composed and calm way and that’s very impressive because he’s still a really young player.”
The challenge for Rice is to continue his upwards trajectory. Arteta certainly sounds excited at the prospect of testing the midfielder’s boundaries.
“I think there is much more there. We have to put it him more situations for him to explore that talent he has,” he added.
“He needs to recognise as well certain situations earlier in order to build that relationship and chemistry within the unit that he’s playing with, something that is still quite raw, especially with the amount of changes that we made on that left side this season.
“All this is going to contribute to his development and hopefully we can see much more.”
Having finished on the podium last year, Martin Odegaard had to make do with a fourth-place finish in the FWA rankings this year. All the same, he’s likely to challenge Rice for the club’s in-house awards, along with leading scorer Bukayo Saka.
As is the case with Rice, Odegaard is hugely admired by his manager, as much for his talent as his ambition.
“I’ve said many times he’s a great character, a great person to have around,” said Arteta.
“I think he represents the values of our club in the best way and he keeps maturing. He’s going to have some personal experiences in the next month that I think are going to be very good for his progression as well as a person, and we are here to help him.
“When you mature, you mature in everything personally and professionally. His role in the team is very different to the one he had when he joined us on loan [from Real Madrid].
“He’s our captain now and has been for a while and he’s a really respected player that keeps performing in a way that not many can do at this level.”
He added: “We don’t know what level they can reach at the end and that’s why we try to broaden them.
“My job is to give players the right foundations so they can grow and then create an environment to inspire and support them so they can feel that they have the wings to fly whatever they want.
“This is what I have to do – give them the foundations that they can always get better and that the limit is put in relation to where they look at it, and Martin is certainly very ambitious.”
” I am a facilitator of what is beautiful in man”
Both top guys. Hope to see them playing for us for the next 10 years or more.
Everyone is too respectful of David Moyes to say it, but the truth is that it has taken a whole season–and will take longer–for Rice’s extraordinary potential to emerge from the limits he was under at West Ham. Of course, he also developed important positional understanding in defending and a sense of game management that Arsenal have benefited from. He wasn’t exactly shackled there, but he was certainly restrained (and maybe some of that was inevitable, given the relative resources of the clubs). There’s lots of things that he did this year for the first time, as he described in… Read more »
An even better Declan Rice? Scary thought. Certainly seems plausible though (even though it looks like he himself still needs to be convinced to some extent, but Arteta will take care of that) I wouldn’t put too much of the blame on David Moyes though, firstly it’s good for a young player not to have his sights set too wide and first learn one position and make it his own before seeing what’s next, and he certainly did that. Secondly that’s a team that needs to defend much more, so even attacking players spend much more time in their own… Read more »
What does Arteta mean by the personal experience that Martin Odegaard is going to have this month?
Being captain of league champions maybe?
I would guess a kid or marriage
Yeah, has to be. I was thinking maybe an ayahuasca retreat, but no, you’re probably right.
😬
It was a cringeworthy press conference today. Mikel almost looked uncomfortable at how much the journalists were sucking up to him. I guess there isn’t too much to ask when things are going well.
Our player of the year is going to be so interesting. I don’t know if we ever had such a close contest in recent years. I genuinely can’t guess who’ll win and there’s atleast three players who I believe have been a notch above anyone else- Rice, Odegaard and Saliba. You can argue Saka and Big Gabbie also could be in there. Personally, it’s Odegaard for me. He’s personifies everything that is good about this team with his off the ball work rate and on the ball wizardry.
I’m sorry, but quite what I have done to deserve every one of my comments being censored I don’t know.
But Rice, for me has been our best signing since Fabregas. A great player.
I dunno man. If you include value, Odegaard is a better signing than Rice imo.