Scouting Declan Rice, Parts II and III

For Part II, let's investigate his potential as an advanced playmaking 8. Finally, we'll close up this series by crafting an ideal role for his unique talents

Jun 07, 2023

The last we spoke, we started our process of spelunking the less-consensus parts of Declan Rice’s game ahead of his long-awaited transfer decision.

In that one, we ventured into the details of his build-up game to better understand how he’d project as a 6 in a more modern side.

Some conclusions:

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.

Many of the comments were filled with anxiety from those concerned about getting our collective hopes up before the ink is dry. This is understandable. But as my mother once told me:

“Dance like nobody's watching. Sing like nobody's listening. Get irrationally invested in transfer speculation like you’ve never been hurt.”

Today, I’ve decided to rip the band-aid off, and combine Parts II and III into one post.

Let’s look into the subtleties of Rice’s game as a more advanced box-to-box playmaker, and make some conclusions about an optimal role for him.

🔥 Part II: Projecting Rice as a creative LCM

We’ll check out a few relevant facets of his game here, starting with his work out of possession.

Advanced defending

As one would expect given his responsibilities and skill, Rice fares well defensively compared to his counterparts at the 8 — with virtually a clean sweep across the board.

Though it’s not defending, per se, it is worth noting here that Rice leads the league in ball recoveries. In a more advanced role, that would be extra-useful when Ramsdale plays it long and directly up to the 9, as the team likes to do to begin halves (or when there is a mismatch to exploit).

Jesus is good at muscling for position here, and while he doesn’t always outright win the ball, he successfully creates a lot of mayhem-second-ball situations. Rice would be excellent at forming the circumference:

You can picture Jesus creating a bouncing ball, Rice controlling it, and hitting it through to a sprinting Martinelli, in a similar fashion to how Brentford uses Mbeumo.

Plotting such a second ball situation is how Man City manufactured a goal within 13 seconds for Gündoğan in the FA Cup final, of course:

It was also key to their domination of … us! 🥴

Against Brighton, the Arsenal press was fairly excellent for much of the game, forcing the notorious back-players to play it long, though the dam broke in the second half via mistakes. Those with memories of Rice intercepting Partey in one of the definitive moments of the season will see the virtues of the former playing up the pitch with Ødegaard and Jesus in a hybrid pressing scheme like so:

The added burst would help gather marginal balls like this one:

Likewise, the presence of Rice, and his superlative transitional defending, should help to stabilize a left side that is often targeted in transition thanks to Zinchenko’s adventurousness and shortcomings.

That said, Xhaka’s numbers in the more advanced role — before settling into the middle of a 4-4-2 block — show a lack of intervention:

Though Xhaka isn’t the quickest player, he still carries an extraordinary work-rate and a keen sense of positional awareness; put another way, these low numbers are not a product of laziness. So the concern here is that this role is not central enough for a player like Rice to exploit some of his top-tier characteristics.

Is this where you’d want Rice to be in “rest defence,” counter-pressing and looking to keep the ball pinned? I’m not so sure.

As we covered last time, the West Ham shape makes it a little too easy to play around Rice. I’m more inclined to have him in the middle.

Carrying, dribbling, and shooting

So we covered where Rice currently outpaces his colleagues at the 8; it’s time for the pendulum to swing the other direction.

In the last edition, we covered how Rice’s role is surprisingly height limited (at least, it was surprising to me). He’s got 24 total touches in the attacking box all year. For comparison, that’s 19 fewer than Gabi XL.

To better understand that phenomenon, I looked up the seasonal averages for actions by Rice and Xhaka, and tried to find the most indicative performances I could. Here are two action maps, against the same dreaded opponent:

With a similar amount of touches and passes, Rice has much more defensive responsibility, and is thus constrained from entering the highest levels of the attacking phase. Xhaka, in a higher-possession side that carries Partey shrouded by two full-backs, is more free to park himself in the left half-space and pick out passes. This constraint is even truer when Rice plays for England, and impacts almost everything we discuss in this post.

The first thing to cover is Rice’s best attacking characteristic, and the best argument for playing him in the 8: his immediate burst and carrying ability. Arsenal is over-reliant on its wingers to carry the ball forward, and there have been times, particularly at Anfield, when Xhaka’s inability to exploit momentary gaps may have proven decisive.

It’s easy to picture a Partey, Jorginho, or a Caicedo delivering an outlet ball like this:

…and Rice doesn’t typically get caught, and keeps scanning throughout. He brings it all the way up to the box, attracts attention, and delivers an assist:

You may remember that Trossard attacking this half-space with a direct dribble was the reason behind the winner against United:

Here, I won’t even show next steps, because I’m sure you can picture it. Rice scored on this one:

…and check out this one out against the infamously muscular and swarming Newcastle this year:

(Look at me, I do gifs now!)

But carrying isn’t always the same as dribbling — and Rice doesn’t have a huge amount of volume in direct take-ons:

Pivoting to fb-ref data, you can nonetheless see efficiency:

Does he have tight-space technicality? He does:

But he can sometimes arrive in the box with too much speed, with an overeagerness leading to a messiness in the final action. After Rice galloped forward, Thiago was able to get in front of this:

Can Rice park in the left half-space, accept the ball at his feet with his back to goal, and dribble through traffic like a Jesus or a Trossard might?

I honestly don’t know, as looking for examples of that in his career is essentially a “404 — page not found.” I tend to believe he’d perform an OK job — an excellent job by standards of a 6 — but worry that lesser players (i.e. more standard attacking 8’s) can too easily replicate his skills in that position, when things are more static and he’s moving less.

As far as ball-striking goes, he doesn’t score all that often, but when he does, it’s usually a banger. His technique looks excellent, but he is just too far away from goal to regularly pound in high-percentage opportunities:

His average shot length (23.6 yards) was further than any member of the Arsenal squad this year. I have little doubt that he has more goals in him with higher quality possession — though he may have to watch just how much he’s shooting long on a more control-based team. These slow curlers are the most fun:

And a final point here: Rice has taken up corners of late, and often takes the free-kicks and penalties. Though he’s OK, it gives the vibes of “the best kid on the youth squad gets to do all the fun things.” He should be in the box, and scoring more in the air — I don’t believe I saw him with a single aerial goal in his career for West Ham yet.

Passing in the final third

As you’ll see above, Rice has a more progression-heavy role, focused on getting the ball into the final third, while others have more responsibility within that third. Even so, there are still potential flags, namely that “accurate passes to the penalty area” percentage.

One of the big questions for Rice in the LCM role will be how he fares in relationist triangles and rotations on the edge of the box. After going through those opportunities, I bring you a nuanced answer.

If his partners are in front of him, as they often are as Rice bursts onto the scene through the left-half space, he is pretty masterful. That is because of his ability to toco y me voy, where he decides the space he will burst into before he releases the ball, manipulates the defenders, and then has the acceleration to leave them behind:

This can happen all the way down the pitch, and is just as successful in less advanced areas, playing super-wide with the winger.

That said, here is where Xhaka usually found himself in more advanced possession:

Could Rice do a job here? Sure. Are there a lot of examples of it? No. Is it the best use of his abilities? I’m not so sure — I see where Zinchenko lines up in that picture and can’t help but picture Rice there.

As such, his penalty area deliveries tend to come from a little further back, are often lifted, and haven’t caused spectacular output. On eye test, they have some nice bend and malice to them. Xhaka did this pretty well, but as a team, this is a way in which Arsenal can improve:

One discovery of this exercise (for me at least) was just how fluid Rice is with his left foot. Though I literally couldn’t find an example of him accepting the ball in the box and performing a cut-back cross (I saw him do it a couple times out wider, but again, he’s rarely in the box), I saw a ton of great work with his left. I’d generally be bullish about his game doing the “Xhaka cut.”

He has also snuck over to the right and pinned in a fair amount of crosses:

As we covered, his switch game is elite, and one can easily envision the left “overloading to isolate,” before Rice switches it over to Saka. In practice, I do wonder if he switches a little too often.

Next, let’s get to the big question.

🔥 Part III: Crafting a role for Rice

(A note in mid-July now that Rice has officially signed: this was written in early-June, while Xhaka was reportedly leaving, Havertz wasn’t linked, and there weren’t reports of Partey leaving. We’ve received some more clarity since — so check recent posts for that!)

It’s time for the bullshitty, Arteta cosplaying part of our hour. Here’s where I put on my Lego hair wig, get my whiteboard out, and generally make recommendations for an opaque situation that is liable to change quickly. Oh well, indulge me.

There is much debate about the optimal role for Rice, as there has been for years. That’s because the debate isn’t fully settled, and no participant is really wrong. He is a rare type of player — Valverde, Kimmich, Camavinga, and Gündoğan come to mind — who is almost impossible to misprofile, as they’ll be good most anywhere.

It is nonetheless an important thing to settle, as with Rice, it may be the difference between him being a top 10-20 midfielder and an all-time great. Rice himself has shared his druthers in the past, name-dropping Patrick Vieira and Yaya Touré:

“I want to be progressive and athletic. I feel like I can do that in a midfield sense. I feel like now I'm not just a holding midfielder anymore," Rice said. “I was always labelled as one that just sits in front of the back four, I really now want to see myself as a box-to-box player where I can get up and down and start creating things as well as getting back and helping the team as well. There is still a long way to go and I can improve so much.”

On the other hand, Rice’s comments about his role with England sound like those of a good soldier:

“At my club, I play like a box-to-box midfielder. I can go where I want, I can go forward and free roam, I can get in the box. But with England, there is a massive emphasis on me being in the middle of the pitch. And having had that conversation with Gareth and Steve (Holland), I’m not going to go up the pitch and do the opposite of what they have told me. This is the World Cup and this is what is best for the team. It’s important to do what they say and that is being in front of the back four, being that central connection, being there so the attacking players can go and flourish and having that good connection with the back four.”

Likewise, it’s highly likely that Arteta has shared a compelling vision of Rice’s possible future and role at Arsenal, and it’s more specific than “we’ll see.” This was today, in the Guardian:

“Not that Arteta’s interest is solely down to Rice’s defensive qualities. When Rice ran half the length of the pitch to score against Gent in April, the response from one person who knows Rice’s game inside out was to expect him to do even more in the final third in a bigger team.”

What do we make of all this?

First, I believe (and hope) Rice will have his preferences as to how he’s deployed best, but is most likely to be “sold” by an overarching club vision, a belief in organizational competence, and a plan for reliable trophy contention at the highest levels. He’s consistently reiterated his desire for Champions League football, and seems to be managing the difficult task of a graceful exit as a club hero.

As such, I think a specific role is less important than meaningfully exploiting two of his best-in-world capabilities, while raising the levels of the team around him. Those two qualities are:

Ability to attack space with a progressive carry
Perhaps world-best defensive coverage in the middle of the pitch

I believe a key to the upcoming season, and a key to Arsenal’s next step as a project, will be improved depth, unpredictability, and matchup-based optionality. Rice offers that, and we have every reason to believe he’d be a worthy every-week starter in the process.

So my answer to whether he should play 6 or 8 is: Yes. But let’s get more specific.

Option A: Rotating 8

For use in: Immediate future, more evenly-matched games, higher-pressing match-ups

This is the cleanest way to integrate him into the current squad — one with Partey, Jorginho, and the likely exit of Xhaka — and the one that would best play to Rice’s forward-leaning athleticism (and perhaps, his immediate preferences). The good news is that I feel quite positive about it after going through this exercise.

After all, he’s comfortable on this left side already, there’s a Xhaka-sized hole in the lineup, and he and will be able to work himself into Arsenal-style build-up with more ease.

But really, with more attacking transition opportunities in the offing while games are in flux, I just want to see him getting the ball as an outlet in this position and burst forward with pace, ahead of two press-resistant build-up players in the traditional pivot:

Fill in the blanks with your desired 6’s inverted RB’s, present or future.

So that he can do stuff like this, as we’ve covered:

The question, then, turns to the “rest defending” — or how you get the most out of Rice defensively. As we’ve covered, if he were to merely inherit Xhaka’s role, he may not be optimally placed to cause the havoc he should.

The answer to that is pretty simple: more aggressive and automatic rotation with the left-most pivot, usually Zinchenko, from the first phase on up. With Zinchenko (or Caicedo?) coming over there, they can invade the box and pick out little tricky passes in crowded space, while Rice can hang back, keep the ball pinned, and survey passing opportunities:

While it’s my opinion that Zinchenko should never gain regular time as the true LCM — it wouldn’t make optimal use of his unicorn build-up capabilities — this perfectly suits his ability to dictate tempo from deep, venture widely, and also pick out passes in the box, with the safety of Rice’s wide coverage when tracking back. Rice gets to dominate the middle third as we know he can, and stay behind the play for his give-and-gos.

Moreover, these are the games in which Arsenal is more likely to dish it long to the 9, and Rice will be well-placed to pick up second balls. Better teams are also more likely to play it out the back, in which case Rice’s presence up front in the press (with Ødegaard and Jesus) is likely to yield disruption, as it did against us.

With Rice in the 8, the lineup options are hearty combination of technicality, practicality, and physicality. A lineup could feasibly feature all of Gabriel, Saliba, White, Partey, and Rice, not to mention Kiwior or a transfer addition like Caicedo. A “middle three” rest defence of Rice, Partey, White in front of the CB’s is positively nasty to try and counter against, as will his position in the 4-4-2.

But what about lower blocks? What about a longer-term vision for his role?

Option B: Floating 6

For use in: Long-term plans, parked buses, closing out leads, or if one of the more attacking options at left-8 is elite

In a vacuum, most of my longer-term impulses point Rice to the position of “Floating 6.” There may be more historically-literate ways of describing this role — an untethered regista, or something? I’m not good at that stuff, so I coin my own nonsense, and demand royalties — but I’d see it as way of altering the 6 to serve Rice’s unique strengths.

As it stands, the Arsenal form is happiest when it is both direct and fluid. Against low-blocks, goals are most likely to be found in quick, dynamic rotations and crisp passes. The 6, however, is not generally part of that fluidity, often staying put in the middle of the pitch without rotational coverage.

Rice is capable of doing that, as he’s shown for England. Particularly against low blocks and more overmatched teams, his transitional defensive radius means that Arsenal can safely slot in a true attacker in the left-8 — be it Vieira, Trossard, ESR, or any number of transfer targets — while his attacking qualities in the 8 (namely, arriving on the scene with a carry) won’t be given as much opportunity to shine.

In that case, Rice would probably play a role somewhat similar to what Partey and Jorginho do now, unleashing an even-more committed attacking-5 on the opponent:

But if he were to pair with another player with hybrid capabilities like Caicedo — or Gündoğan, Manu Koné, Khéphren Thuram, Youri Tielemans (yeah, I said it), Roméo Lavia, or Teun Koopmeiners, the distinction between 6 and 8 suddenly becomes less … distinct — to the advantage of everybody, except Arsenal’s opponents.

We start to look at those two positions as we see Martinelli and Jesus in their respective positions:

The objective, in either case, will be to have Rice playing a bit like Rodri or Thomas in lower build-up. With the crisp inverted pivot partner he is denied for both club and country, his “in progress” build-up characteristics — getting trapped wrong-footed in the lower left, passing too conservatively, dribbling a little too much — are dulled, but his best characteristics are given a platform to shine. Compared to his work for England, he’ll have two players closer to him in midfield, and five (instead of four) ahead.

As he moves forward, he can play a little less like his England self, and more like Bruno Guimarães, who, despite having fewer touches overall, has 8 more touches in the attacking third per 90, and bombs forward to the box much more often, with a player like Longstaff covering behind — helping him contribute 9 G+A in league play (to Rice’s 5).

As the roster is currently constructed, this is the role I would look at against lower-tier sides, ensuring Rice is fully versed on the responsibilities of the Arsenal 6. Yes, I believe he could do it immediately.

I almost described this role as something like “Jorginho in the streets, Bruno G in the sheets.”

Aren’t you glad I didn’t do that?

TL;DR

Here are my inclinations for now, which are liable to be immediately disproven in a rapidly-changing situation:

Rice’s flexibility is a feature, not a bug. I don’t think Arsenal have to rigidly choose between playing him at the 6 or the 8 in the short-term. Whatever his role, what matters most is to max out his defensive coverage and his opportunities to carry the ball forward with abandon.
I would suggest that Rice currently has marginally more plug-and-play potential at the 8, and more long-term potential as a best-in-world type at the 6.
As such, with the squad constructed as-is, I would play him at the 8 a lot in the early days, where we can feel reasonably certain about his levels. Despite his experience there, we are still in the “insufficient data” period of his most advanced work in the box. If he turns into a G+A machine, simply keep him there, and move other parts around.
Against bonafide low-blocks — which may be a good amount of games, particularly in league — I’d look for him to patrol the middle as a 6, with a more 10 type placed at LCM. On the current squad, that’d lean towards Vieira, Trossard, and ESR, but will likely include a transfer addition. If one of them starts showing signs of eliteness, or if the transfer option looks like a nailed-on starter, this plan just speeds up.
With this year as a transition period, then, Rice will be fully-versed in the obligations of an Arsenal 6, which is the responsible course even if he doesn’t ultimately settle there.
Paired with the potential of an inverting RB at times, lineup possibilities get well and truly exciting.

As I said, there’s likely to be no wrong answer here, but they all lead to an improved Arsenal.

Finally, let’s address the elephant in the room. I’ve spoken about it in the past, including last summer, but here was my most recent comment on the potential addition of Caicedo:

I'm realistic, but Caicedo is worth that bag. It ain't normal to play in a possession-dominant side (higher % than us), have the second-most touches among midfielders, lead the league in short passes, and also be second in the league in tackles+interceptions. Definitely not normal to do that in a season you started as a 20-year-old.
Rice and Caicedo are #1 and #2 in interceptions, btw. If that doesn't feel attacking enough, think of the knock-on effects of raising your "stage" to the opponent's penalty area for most games, pinning it over and over; against evener sides, players like Martinelli can get a little lazier and opportunistic out-of-possession, cheating up like Ronaldo and Vini.
Said it before, say it again: blow the budget, and figure everything else out on frees or whatever. Something at RCB/RB is all you'd need, and there are a couple options.

Hope you enjoyed reading this little series. Will work on transfer lists next.

Oh, and one final note:

SSSSIIIIIGGGGGN ‘EM BOOOOTTH, EDDDUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!

Happy grilling.

❤️🔥