Morning, boys and girls, hope you’re all well.
Yesterday I was waxing lyrical about Mikel Arteta’s new deal, and in that blog I talked about how we need to start looking at Martin Odegaard and Declan Rice next.
Well, wouldn’t you just know it, but Tuesday and yesterday’s news started emerging about just that. Declan is rumoured to be getting a £280k-per-week deal, if you believe what you read on the internet, and Arsenal are going to [use this September international break to chivvy that one along](https://www.tribalfootball.com/article/soccer-premier-league-arsenal-use-international-break-to-restart-declan-rice-extension-talks-5a8869cf-0207-4acf-b827-a1697a514187). Lovely stuff. And it makes sense too; he’s at home with his feet up, with his ‘load’ being ‘managed’, so why wouldn’t he spend a day or two in a room with Arsenal reps talking about giving him a tasty new bump up in pay?
And he’s fully deserving of it too. He is a machine. A workhorse who also happens to be very good at _The Football_ and, ever since we paid out handsomely for his services, he’s proved time and time again that he is worth every penny. Heck, his song is even about the value for money we got for him. He is versatile, having played in multiple positions for us, plus he is a model professional that basically nobody in the game says anything negative about. He is surely a shoo-in to be the next England captain, and there’s plenty of Arsenal fans who think he should be the Arsenal one too. He’s a guy who leads the team in so many metrics, and the one image I just had whilst I was writing about it was that game up at Anfield a few seasons back when we chucked a load of players high up the pitch late in the game – I think for a corner – and they broke with about four players and just Declan Rice as an outfield option. Liverpool hit the bar, but Rice’s positioning to stop it from being a tap-in was impeccable, and the memes of John Snow against Ramsey Bolton’s army in _Game of Thrones_. It embodied what Declan Rice is all about; at times, he is a one-man army himself and I personally feel very privileged to have him playing for my team. My brother is a West Ham fan, and when we signed him, he told me he was worth every penny. I was not so convinced. How wrong I was.
And it’s not just Rice who’s having contract chat, either, by the sounds of it. As our _actual_ captain is in talks to extend too. I’ve always been a big fan of Martin Odegaard. I have seen him do things with the ball at his feet that have amazed. He found his home at The Arsenal after that loan spell in 2022; we got him in that summer, and he’s never looked back. Sure, we haven’t seen the best of him last season or the season before, but I do believe that has been injury-related, because what we’ve seen thus far has been certainly impressive and worthy of discussions. He’s looked every bit the central creator for which our good attacking play flows, and back-to-back man-of-the-match performances against Napoli and Chelsea have proven so.
He’s not perfect, we know that, and against Brighton he was pretty anonymous like most of our attack, but that one game recency bias will not cloud our judgement of how good he’s been. I also think he’s in a position where he could easily play well into his 30s. He’s 27 now, turns 28 in December, which I think, if you’re thinking about a four- or five-year deal, means we get him for absolute prime Odegaard years, so I hope this deal gets done with little fuss.
I think both will. Both players seem happy; they are integral parts of Arteta’s Arsenal, they’ve just won the Premier League and got to the Champions League final. Where else would they go? There’s nowhere in England you’d choose. PSG are in a tinpot league. If both were in their 30s I’d speculate that you could see them moving to Saudi for one last big payday, but that isn’t now. The Italian big clubs have no money, and that league doesn’t have the romance of the 90s when I was growing up, so that basically leaves the two big Spanish clubs. Real under Mourinho….really? So then you’re looking at Barca. I don’t think either of those players are closet Barca fans, and Barca’s usual tactic of trying to get a player on the cheap didn’t work with Alvarez, so why would it work with The Arsenal now?
So I’m pretty _calma_ about these deals, which is nice, given we had the best part of a decade-and-a-half worrying about this from about 2005 – 2020. They are in a great City, at a great club; they’ve won things; they seem happy, and their manager has just signed a new deal, which ensures some continuity. There’s plenty to like about the ‘Project’ and I hope these can get sorted out sooner rather than later. Then we need to get back on that horse and back to winning football matches after this particular lull has done its _lulling_.
[Here’s a nice little bit of bonus reading for you from the Standard](https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/saka-arteta-arsenal-fc-dream-contract-b1298104.html) to finish off today’s musings, as Saka talks about how important Arteta’s new deal is for the club. Lovely stuff. As for me, I’m off to do a bit of work, so I’ll be back tomorrow as usual to look at the weekend’s games tell you about which National Trust property I might go and visit given I have no interest in watching ENG-GER-LAND.
Laters.