Photo by Catherine Ivill - AMA/Getty Images
Photo by Catherine Ivill - AMA/Getty Images
Declan Rice withdrew from the England squad earlier this week ahead of the upcoming Nations League fixtures.
The official reason for that is ‘load management’ a term that has slowly crept into football vocabulary from American basketball. Of course, some might roll their eyes at that, but when you look at Rice’s numbers, it’s easy to see why he’s being carefully managed.
Rice has played 76 (seventy six.) times for both Arsenal and England since the start of last season. That includes 41 Premier League games and 20 cup appearances (14 in the Champions League and six in the Carabao Cup).
A graphic showing quotes from former Premier League referee Mark Clattenburg reading: "There is no doubt Declan Rice should have been sent off."
A graphic showing quotes from former Premier League referee Mark Clattenburg reading: "There is no doubt Declan Rice should have been sent off."
Of course, Rice also played seven games at the World Cup which he played through despite illness and neural hamstring pain. The tournament didn’t even finish until July 18 and Rice was back in action for the Community Shield just a month later on August 16.
Arsenal and England are right to be careful with Declan Rice
The Arsenal midfielder is currently second among England squad members for total minutes played since the start of last season, amassing 6,031 minutes. Only Marc Guehi has played more.
Speaking to The Athletic, performance specialist Geoff Scott assessed his situation, having spent years working at Premier League level, most recently as performance director at Nottingham Forest.
“If you never have a break, you can expect injury to follow,” he said, bluntly. He also noted that Rice “perhaps isn’t at his World Cup levels” yet, which raises an interesting question about whether the real Rice is still to come this season.
Scott explains that load management is “controlling the progression of overload a player has over a longer period”. That process involves monitoring GPS data, sprint distances, accelerations and decelerations to make sure there’s no excessive spike in physical demand.
Arsenal will also be thankful that another one of their key players, Kai Havertz, was only called up for two of Germany’s four international break games. They need the likes of Havertz, Rice, Bukayo Saka and Martin Odegaard to stay fit if they are to compete on all fronts.