Chelsea don’t have a team yet, we do. He could be missing piece in our team. We should have CL football next season, and the draw of Arteta and the Arsenal project will be strong. Also think that West Ham would prefer to sell to us over Chelsea.
If FFP rules change in time for the summer window we could also blow Chelsea out of the window by offering the money they want, but as an upfront payment. If there had of been a two way battle for Caicedo between us and Chelsea, we would have won hands down as Chelsea would not have been able to offer to pay so much upfront.
Going forward Chelsea will have to pay for transfers in instalments. This is the way we can compete with them going forward.
I do t get the assumption that he’ll end up a cunt-blue. Rice pretty much knows he’s set if he were to join Arsenal. Whereas half the ch💩lsea roster will be playing for mid table clubs in a couple of years time.
Get the chance to play for your boyhood club who happen to be one of the top teams and spending like mad to be relevant again? Yeah I’d be joining them too.
I don’t know why our fans suddenly seem to consider us favourites. I think if we want him we can get him should Chelsea/City not be interested.
Rice, Enzo, Chuckie, Mount, Kova is quite a set of midfield options.
Thankfully, Rice told me he wants to go Nando’s with ESR and play Saka’s spelling school every day. Welcome to the Arsenal Declan. We are going to win loads.
Want his signing more than any other in midfield. I think he’s better than DeJong although different and would offer better value than Bellingham. Partey, Rice, Jorginho, Xhaka, Vieira, ESR and Odegaard would be a brilliant set of midfield options and Patino and Lokonga are still around.
As a season ticket holder this is annoying…more than happy to help fund Rice, but do like the current 26 home games you get with the season ticket. Hopefully season ticket holders will still get first first refusal for their seat for cup games before they go on sale.
The article on the Arsenal website says you do, so really just a price rise on all tickets and ST.
Bit of a kicker after they already did it last year but kind of expected with the level of performance increasing, they were always going to try and capitalise.
I only know how Arsenal and Nottingham Forest work with regards to season tickets and for Forest, a season ticket only gets league games, then for all other games, they have to buy a ticket (usually getting different seats) but season ticket holders get first access (however generally have to act quickly to get tickets).
There is a similar price increase for Platinum season tickets, but that still gives access to every men’s home games across the season.
Everyone’s that played with him really rates him.
I certainly don’t think he’s close to the likes of Partey, Casemiro or Rodri yes but he’s probably right after them in the pecking order and could reach them under the right coach.
I don’t see rice as purely a DM though. I think he’s pretty good all round. I can see him in the xhaka role now. He’d add drive, physicality and presence going forward. Further down the line he’s a natural replacement for partey
As a midfielder he hasn’t got many weaknesses.
Although he can play DM because he’s strong defensively, he’s also good going forward like Vieira used to for us and is a great passer.
He’s a much better version of what Xhaka has been doing for us recently and is still fairly young.
If we don’t win the title, we’ll still be favourites to sign him because Man City will be avoiding FFP and so will Chelsea, who were favourites to get him and he also knows he’ll be a guaranteed starter here.
Ideally Rice will be Arteta’s main target in the next window, although we will have to break our transfer record to get him but if there’s a player who’s worth paying the extra for, it’s definitely him.