As his influence and stature have grown in recent years, Declan Rice has found himself placed in a familiar categorization of great English midfielders. In many ways, it is reasonable to view the Arsenal dynamo in the lineage of Bryan Robson, Steven Gerrard and David Beckham. Just like them, he can be the Roy of the Rovers all-action type, winning a tackle at one end, sprinting up the field and slamming in a late winner.
There is a reason his Arsenal teammates nickname him The Horse, why Mikel Arteta never seems to give him a night off: this is a guy who can go and go and go. And when he's on the field, he can do plenty of what his legendary predecessors did. He bends it like Beckham.
He (far less frequently) crashes the box in Lampardian fashion. His tackling, fortunately for his opponents, is more Paul Ince than Paul Scholes. All of these players were exceptional talents, at their peak worthy of consideration for the biggest individual prizes in the sport.
Most of them were not, however, quite the do-it-all midfielders they were labeled as. That much was apparent at major tournaments when the English public craved nothing more than an Andrea Pirlo, a Luka Modric, a Rodri: a player whose passing could dictate the flow of the biggest games. England -- and indeed at times last season Arsenal -- have needed that.
In his pursuit to be the best midfielder on the planet, it would appear that Rice is intent on giving it to them. It is hard to be certain when all we know is that Arteta decided to announce that Rice was no longer a "lighthouse" but that the Arsenal world would have to wait until the end of the season for confirmation as to what structure his midfielder was now asked to embody. Whatever it is, well, Rice is certainly lighting the way for his teammates.
More frequently than ever before, the 27-year-old is finding himself at the start of Arsenal's buildup, the player who gets the rest of his team going. Among starters, no player is involved in more possessions than Rice. Unsurprisingly, then, he leads this team for touches per 90 Premier League minutes, his 87.5 putting him 13% ahead of second-placed Martin Odegaard.
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