Rice may not a massive miss
In big matches like this, any team would miss a player of Rice calibre, not least for his calming presence and experience.
Yet the 25-year-old has been a long way off ทางเข้า ufabet his highest standards during the early stages of the 2024/25 campaign.
He has looked after the ball beautifully, averaging a 97.1 per cent passing accuracy, the best of any top-flight player to have featured for at least 90 minutes.
Rice has not, however, been a dominant presence.
In fact, he has made less than half the number of successful passes per 90 minutes than he did for the Gunners last season.
Rice’s 23/24 v 24/25 passing compared
| Premier League | 23/24 | 24/25 |
|---|---|---|
| Passing accuracy | 90.6% | 97.1% |
| Succ. passes/90 | 56.3 | 26.9 |
| Succ. passes in opp half/90 | 32.5 | 18.8 |
| Chances created | 1.3 | 0.8 |
Taking up wider than usual positions on the left of Arteta’s midfield, Rice has not been fed the ball as often during the build-up phase.
On the periphery in all three of his starts, this tells the story of a player who has been gently feeling his way back to full fitness, following a limited pre-season.
Defensive numbers down
The England international works hard, and has covered a team-high average of 10.9km per 90 minutes across the first three matches. But even that is down on 2023/24, when Rice ran an average of 11.51km each game.
In his box-to-box role the Arsenal star is ask to defend in a different way to. When he plays at No 6, with pressing a bigger part of his brief.
He does that well, and this aspect of his play will miss on Sunday but overall, his defensive numbers are not as impressive as last season.
Making only one tackle, and winning a sparse amount of duels. We are yet to see the best of Rice out of possession.