A private talk before the season
Mikel Arteta sat Declan Rice down before the campaign and told him the job had changed. “You are not the lighthouse anymore. You are something else,” the Arsenal manager said, in comments published today. Rice had carried the lighthouse tag since arriving in 2023, a term Pep Guardiola used for Rodri at Manchester City: the fixed point everything is organised around.
The move looks deliberate. Rice now sits deeper on the right of a midfield pivot, where two seasons ago he played as a left-sided number eight. Arsenal have asked him to drive the ball forward rather than hold the shape.
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What the numbers say
Through six league games, Rice already has three open-play assists, more than in the whole of 2025/26. Two went to Bruno Guimaraes, against Sunderland and Leeds, and one to Kai Havertz against Chelsea. His final-third entries are up 25% on last season and have doubled since 2024/25.
His line-breaking passes have nearly doubled too, and nobody in the Premier League has made more. Backwards passes are down 50%. Rice is simply taking fewer safe options.
One gap remains. Every Arsenal goal this season has come from open play, and the club has not scored from a set piece since March, which is a strange dry spell for a side that built much of its recent success on dead balls. Arsenal visit Nottingham Forest on Sunday, October 18 at 4.30pm.
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