'Out of depth' - Arsenal star opens up on 2023/24 season struggles

The Arsenal and England star Declan Rice has opened up on his first few months at the Emirates Stadium, detailing he felt significantly ‘out of his depth’ when he first arrived at N7. The 24-year-old midfielder arrived at Arsenal following six exceptionally impressive seasons in the east of the capital with West Ham and his transfer to the Gunners made him the most expensive English player of all time.

Arteta’s side payed over £100 million for the former Irons man and he has been far from a disappointment, aiding the Spanish head coach in the club’s battle with Manchester City for the top spot. The England international is well on the way to featuring in the PFA Team of the Season, with GiveMeSport suggesting he could even win the PFA Player of the Year award, but the midfielder has admitted that he did not ‘really understand anything’ during his first few months in Highbury.

Speaking to The Athletic, Rice confessed the transition to Mikel Arteta’s style of play proved much more challenging than he had anticipated and said: "He’ll ask us to break things down, like in terms of our pressing and where we should go: ‘If that person drops, who goes there?’. Sometimes you feel a little bit on the spot because you don’t know the answer.

“But my main thing (around adaptation)”, Rice continued, “was in pre-season when I’d obviously just got there and was trying to gain fitness. We played against Man United and I didn’t have the best of games. I wasn’t really that fit. And that was when we really tried to play our game model and you could just see I was way out of depth. I didn’t really understand anything that was going on.

“There were some good moments when I was trying to learn it, but there were also some moments where you could see I needed to improve a lot. After that, I watched a lot of videos and then on the training field tried to really improve. I think that game (against United) was a real catalyst to helping me out.” Rice would score his first Arsenal goal in this clash with the Gunners scoring two injury-time goals to secure a 3-1 win.

Rice has arguably become an even greater player at Arsenal than he was at West Ham and will undoubtedly be on the plane to Germany, featuring in Gareth Southgate’s England squad at the upcoming European Championships.