Daily Archives: September 12, 2023

All Hail Lord Declan Rice, August’s Finest

When Declan Rice joined Arsenal for the British record transfer fee early in the summer, there were great expectations from him. He showed great confidence on and off the pitch and you could see the love the fans showered on him during the preseason sojourns in the United States.

Preseason football was over and it was time for the main business, starting from the Community Shield against Manchester City. Rice played 81 minutes against such a strong opposition and was one of Arsenal’s standout players.

He followed this up with another top performance in the Premier League opener against Nottingham Forest with Matt Turner being at his best to stop Rice from getting his first Arsenal goal. Following the win over Nottingham Forest, Arsenal visited Selhurst Park to take on Crystal Palace and Takehiro Tomiyasu’s red card put Arsenal in a precarious position, which ensured that the Gunners had to revert to Satanball to retain their lead.

This brought out the very best in Declan Rice as he defended with his life, giving his team some confidence as they played valiantly to get all three points. Fulham was next and Rice put up his usual monster numbers, even though Arsenal didn’t win the match following a late goal conceded.

As expected, Rice won possession the most times for his team in the entirety of August, and it’s a stat we will expect in the course of the season. Rice also made 29 final third entries in the three games to combine with the Arsenal attackers and he had a pass completion percentage of 92 percent.

Arsenal fans have voted Declan Rice as the Player of the Month for August, beating Eddie Nketiah, William Saliba and Ben White. Rice fully deserves the award as he has been a standout player in the games he has played thus far.

You can’t look any further than his last game against Manchester United that saw him score his first goal for the club. We are so happy to have such a generational talent in our ranks.