Scouting Declan Rice, Part I

A deep investigation into the less-consensus parts of his game, starting with how he projects in pressured, modern build-up. Next, we'll look at his qualities as an advanced creator. Plus, a thank you

First things first. This week marks the end of the Arsenal season, but it also ends my first season writing about Arsenal.

I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything. You’ve all provided me an excuse to do what I love: to stay up late a night or two every week, to learn, to write, to unlearn, to write some more.

It’s my inclination to slap my knee and say that “I do this to satisfy my own curiosities, and if you’ve enjoyed it, that’s a bonus.” But really, I’ve received a lot more from you all than I’ve given.

And so we’ll keep this thing going. I’ll keep you posted as this thing evolves, but the plan is to keep writing, and to keep it widely free and available. I might add an option to support it moving forward on Substack, and maybe there will be an extra post a month for subscribers or something. I don’t know. There’s a little “pledge” button somewhere if you’d like to make that happen, as many have.

I’ll be right and wrong plenty in months to come, but along the way, I’ll look to keep chipping away at the protective lining that covers this beautifully opaque sport, trying in vain to get a little closer to understanding this shit once and for all.

Thank you. ❤

Now, back to the wormhole.

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A three-part series

This is not a full scouting report of Declan Rice.

Why not? With a player so widely-known, I think we can press fast-forward through some widely-held assumptions, and dive into the more interesting (and potentially contentious) fringes of his CV.

To start, here are some table stakes that I think are broadly above debate, at least within earshot of me:

1. Declan Rice is one of the best midfielders anywhere, and he’d be a locked-in, every-week starter for pretty much every team in the world — at 6 or 8. In fact, he could probably be a starter at 4-5 other positions for many clubs, too.

2. His athleticism, tackling instincts, anticipation, balance, and defensive acumen are world-elite at the position — and as far as midfielders go, are in the discussion for best in the world. In this Premier League campaign, he’s won possession more than anybody else (334 times), made the most interceptions (63), and is ninth in tackles (79). On top of that, he barely fouls.

3. He has an unflagging work-rate and has always been available. Now 24 as of January, he’s averaged 35 league starts a year since he was a teenager, and covered the third-most distance in the Premier League this season.

4. He is special at pushing the ball up the pitch on progressive carries (second among midfielders in almost every major stat), and has excellent curling switches in him.

5. He is a plus in the air (58.7% won, which is 81st percentile), but probably has more potential to unlock there.

6. He can score bangers.

Moreover, back in January, we invented a stat called “D.U.E.L.S.,” which stood for “Depth Upgrades for the Elusive Lone Six, and aggregated dozens of factors (including duel %, aerial work, interceptions, passing volume, passing %, progressive passing, dribbling), creativity, technicality, positioning, potential, schematic fit, age, value, and more.

Rice dominated everybody.

I’ll look to re-run these numbers soon. It’s time-intensive as it includes personal scouting metrics for all players, and I haven’t figured out a way to automate portions of it.

From there, discussion naturally turns to Rice’s optimal role. Is it as a holding midfielder, or more of an all-action 8-ish beast?

So here’s a three-part series on that, starting with Part I today (barring any Ornbombs in the days ahead):

• Part I: Build-up — If he plays as a modern 6, how will he cope with modern build-up, and the pressures therein? How is his tight-space technicality?

• Part II: Advanced Creativity — How good is he in the final-third, particularly in the left half-space that Xhaka is leaving behind?

• Part III: Role — What would be the ideal role for him at Arsenal, both now and in the future?

To investigate those questions, I made this my little research project over the last couple weeks. I’ve watched him plenty before this, of course, then sped through his performances against Manchester United, Leicester City, Brighton, Liverpool, and yes, Arsenal — as well as England’s games against France, Senegal, Italy (Euro 2024 qualifiers), and Croatia (Euro 2020).

I tried to catch a wide swath of representative performances, and leaned towards the ones in which he was likely to be challenged as a passer. I then created a playlist of ~80 times he had to pass under pressure across competitions.

Today’s a part one. Let’s check out what we found.

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His current role(s)

It’s difficult to evaluate Rice’s performance at West Ham, particularly this year, without acknowledging two things.

The first is how negative of a setup David Moyes has chosen. I say chosen with some intent because, despite a 7th-place finish in 21-22, a £165.7m window filled with promising attacking talent, and a roster that I’d rank among the eight best or so in the league, he went and parked the bus.

They boast the lowest line in the league (with a 15.09 passes per defensive action), and the lowest challenge intensity (with 4.5 duels, tackles, and interceptions per minute of possession), according to Wyscout. In the end, the Hammers were:

• 18th in the league in possession (42.1%)

• 16th in total touches

• 16th in the league in short passes

• 16th in touches in the middle third (229 per game)

• Second-highest in goalkeeper launched pass percentage, bypassing build-up

Here’s another way to describe the setup: they attempted 5,611 fewer passes than Arsenal, but still knocked around 206 more long passes.

The second thing to acknowledge is Tomáš Souček. West Ham’s fortunes seem to carry a healthy correlation to his form, and he had a dreadful year. If you consider West Ham a double-pivot midfield, here was Rice’s pivot partner:

Souček demonstrated his lack of involvement against Arsenal. At the Emirates, he was 8/19 (42%!) passing, and at London Stadium, he improved to 11/13 (85%). Because of his shortcomings, he often ditches his partner to serve as a Weghorst-like vertical-CAM. That leaves Rice in a build-up role that looks lone-6ish in practice, but taking up left-leaning positions like Zinchenko would — if Zinchenko had no real midfield partner, and was right-footed.

In the comparatively rare occasions that there is standard build-up, it usually looks like this, encircled by a horseshoe, with wide-full backs and attackers pushed up the pitch:

Particularly of late, Paquetá has been rushing down to provide more of an outlet, but looking at West Ham’s lower-third play, there are two characteristics: there’s not very much of it, and when there is, there’s an impatience to hoof it long. So when looking at Rice’s total involvement and touches, it’s important to contextualize that with a sense of proportion. West Ham has few touches, and Rice has few collaborators in the midfield.

As you’ll see in the below chart from The Devil’s DNA, he actually ranks second in all outfield players for percentage of his team’s passes received, and receives few progressive passes in return, as he is often behind the ball:

The following chart places him in the sweet spot, considering his current role: successfully balancing progressive actions per 60 touches (higher than Rodri, Enzo, Partey, Caicedo) with few ball losses:

One of the things that became more clear during this exercise was the still-restrained nature of his forward movement for West Ham. While I’ve associated him more with dribble-and-drive underlaps on the left side of late, it doesn’t happen all that much in practice as he stays back and watches for transitions. He’s got 24 total touches in the attacking penalty box all year. For comparison, that’s 19 fewer than Gabi … Large Gabi, that is. In the league leader chart, Reiss Nelson is right behind Rice in that stat — in about 32 games less of action.

Which brings us to his work for England.

Gareth Southgate has slowly evolved his tactics, but one thing has stayed true: Declan Rice as deepest midfielder. Even when playing in a “double pivot” alongside someone often considered more of a traditional six — Kalvin Phillips — it’s Rice who provides the stage for the forward players to stand upon. It’s much appreciated by his teammates, least of which by Phillips:

“I love playing with Declan. I love playing in that role where I have licence to go forward and I know that Declan is behind me backing me up if I ever get beat. here is a lot of talk about me and Declan fighting for a position but I think we play really well together.”

As the World Cup wore on, Rice got more “lone” in his lone-sixing, often patrolling the entire midfield to himself while progression fizzed up the touchlines in a big U. The full-backs stayed as wide as possible and controlled a lot of the progression, though one of them would usually push high while the other stayed low, and the 8’s dropped down situationally. That’s continued to be the case in the qualifiers:

In the World Cup, his job was to safely recycle possession and control transitions, which he did with success. England kept three clean sheets out of five, and allowed a total of 3 goals in their run. Here were his stats in sum:

• 93.2% passing, including 124/125 (99.2%) short passing

• Only 4th in progressive passes, behind Shaw, Maguire, Stones (Because of how U-shaped the build-up is)

• 1 miscontrol in total, 2 dispossessions in 360 touches

• 11 interceptions, which led the team

It’s a post for another time, but I believe that Southgate intently understands Rice’s best-in-world defensive potential, and puts him in the near-perfect role to maximize his impact there. On the inverse, Rice’s leftward lean at West Ham allows teams to avoid him by playing through the other side too easily; there’s no reason a player with his efficiency and work-rate should only be challenging 1.37 dribbles per 90. He should be unavoidable:

Southgate, however, doesn’t fully capture Rice’s offensive potential, particularly as a carrier. Touchmaps will show a pretty strict height limit to his play.

But hopefully this dispels the notion that he hasn’t played 6 at the highest levels to date. He has — and in more difficult, isolated circumstances.

How he stacks up

Below, I’ve pulled some build-up data for five other top Premier League midfielders. When comparing, it’s important to remember that these are five of the best players in the world, all playing slightly different roles:

There are a few observations to make:

• Rice is a highly efficient dribbler and dueler, and likely the best of the bunch, especially when possession-adjusted.

• His passing accuracy is below Rodri, on par with Caicedo and Partey, and above Casemiro and Bruno G. He’s marginally more accurate in forward passing than Partey. In progressive passes (at least 30 meters closer to the opponent's goal), Partey is a little better.

• Both Casemiro and Bruno G are much looser with possession than Rice in their own halves.

• He’s generally more direct and forward-leaning than Caicedo (who leads the league in short passes).

• Rodri has two big advantages here. The first is ridiculous ball security (he has fewer own half losses despite ~30 more passes, but again, factor in team quality there), and the second is medium-length, often lateral, passes that move defenders around. Pulling separate data from fb-ref, Rice and Rodri complete such passes with similar accuracy, but Rodri attempts 21 more per game, and it makes up a larger percentage of his passing radius.

Overall, if you were to blind taste test this chart, you’d probably choose Rice as your 6 over Bruno and Casemiro at the very least (though they have offered more goals).

Let’s dive into the passing some more.

The following data includes all play over the last 365 days, so will deviate slightly from what you see above. It compares him to all outfield players in the Premier League:

First, we should start with how Rice actually kicks off a round of possession, in practice. He does so by winning possession himself. Here’s a perfect encapuslation of his skillset.

Bryan Mbeumo gets the ball in a transition opportunity. He is rapid (and should at least be in the consideration set if Arsenal is looking at a winger, IMO). When running with him, Rice doesn’t have to take a conservative angle. In fact, he bends the run inward to make sure to bother him quickly:

He then meets Mbeumo mid-sprint, and leans into him without fouling. Mbeumo is strong as hell and difficult to muscle off:

But Rice waits for one looser touch and immediately pounces. He goes to ground, gathers it, then dribbles through Toney and Mbeumo before laying it off to Cresswell and peeling off into space before they can react:

This gives him an acre of space to move into:

He then pings a perfect diagonal to play Bowen into space:

In more settled possession, I have little doubt about his overall anticipation and reading of the game. He is savvy, communicative, and active — and consistently makes himself available to his teammates, despite the lethargy (or absence) of West Ham build-up.

He looks least impressive — don’t let anybody overstate things and say he looks bad — but he looks least impressive with his back to goal when possession gets focused in this left corner. He isn’t usually offered the most dynamic options, but sometimes doesn’t help himself, looking “under-rondo’ed” in small doses. His good left foot can sometimes be overused, and he shipped this one over the touchline:

He’s not impervious to the occasional ball-spill, but can usually clean up the mess himself. On this one, his first touch slipped away from him a bit:

And he was able to get his foot in front of it before Núñez could pounce, keeping possession:

In all, you don’t get the sense that dangerous losses are a “macro” problem. Here’s a map of all his losses to date. Largely speaking, considering his volume, this would be right in line with expectation. Keep in mind that a loss can be a headed clearance or a hurried long-ball out of the box, where Rice is very active. When watching these back, those made up the big majority of the lower losses:

…and here’s a better look at those lower losses. He averages about one “dangerous loss” every four games.

As you’ll see, the graphs don’t raise concerns. That said, if Rice were to move into the 6 role, the most interesting thing to watch will be how his ball security “scales up” with a) 20-30 more touches a game and b) better teammates around him.

When his work shades more to the middle and right, he looks much more dynamic with a fuller radius around him. He is positively as good as it gets at these stick-and-moves into space:

With a little space in front of him, he is as good as anybody at hitting advanced runners. Against Frankfurt last year, he hit this one over the top:

…and this is where Benrahma received it on a first touch:

But to better understand how he interfaces in the modern game, we must turn to his work for England, as Southgate is his more progressive manager these days (!). While some of his games in the World Cup were tidy, workmanlike, if overly conservative — I can’t really tell you how impressed I was watching the France game back.

He was basically man-marked by Greizmann for much of the game, who was in the middle of a run alongside Messi and Mbappe as Best Player in the World. Look at how he manipulates Blondie to create space for himself on the turn and burst up the pitch:

If you’re concerned about Rice’s ability to spin his hips and use his body to shield out defenders, don’t be. While the skill is somewhat decreasing in importance in modern build-up, Rice is as good as it gets there.

Once the ball progresses to the middle third, he’s on Rodri’s level, if not beyond it. Watch him move the ball with Stones and Kane, let it run, cut a line-breaking pass with his left, jockey back into space, and line-break again with his right:

(I’ve never done gifs before. I hope these work.)

In all, you can get sense of his progressive characteristics here:

OK, Billy. Let’s wrap it up.

In conclusion

Here’s a TLDR:

• There is likely to be no wrong answer to the “6 or 8” question with Rice, but it may be the difference between a top-10 world midfielder and an all-timer. We’ll save our conclusion for future rounds of the series.

• My answer to whether or not he is currently capable of playing 6 in a top side is an emphatic yes (though with a few notes). The role should however be tailored to his unique skillset.

• He is exceptional at almost every aspect of the role, and once progression rolls into the middle third and he faces to the goal, there are few, if any, players I’d rather have patrolling the midfield and dictating play.

• He is probably least impressive with his back to the goal in the first third; his tape doing modern build-up for West Ham is still scarce, after all these years, and he hasn’t been well-served by his coaching to date in this regard. I thought to myself how any issue I have with his game back there might immediately vanish with a certain Ukrainian as a pivot partner, allowing him to be more central. Any issues here do not seem to stem from a lack of fundamental skill, but of practice.

• He is not immune to a loose first touch, but it is not disastrous, and he often gathers it himself.

• The other aspects of the role — anticipation, communication, work-rate, availability, turning, ambipedalness, tempo-dictation — are all in the “top-right” quadrant.

• The central patrolling position of the England 6 is pretty indisputably the place to park him to get the most impact defensively. Coaches should maximize his defensive coverage and responsibility. 

• Whatever his future role, he should not be artificially constrained from utilizing his carrying ability to push it forward; he should do it whenever he pleases, with the confidence that somebody is covering his back if needed.

Next up, we’ll look at his experience in the final third, and particularly his production in the left half-space. From there, we’ll look to craft what an ideal Arsenal role for Rice would look like, God willing — both now, and in the future.

That’s all, folks.

Be good. And happy grilling. ❤️