‘I see him like a lighthouse, he will light (up) the others and improve the others, and make the team better. The way he talks, the ambition he has and the passion for the game is exactly what we need.’ These were the words of Mikel Arteta upon signing Declan Rice in the summer of 2023.
However, this season, it seems as though Arteta has revoked Rice’s lighthouse license. ‘I went to him and I said: ‘You are not the lighthouse anymore. You are something else.’ These were Arteta’s words after the 2-1 victory over Leeds. In this game, Rice assisted his midfield partner Bruno Guimaraes with a deft flick.
A few weeks ago, [I wrote about](https://arseblog.com/2026/09/how-bukayo-saka-is-getting-into-more-shooting-positions-this-season/) how there had been a clear and obvious attempt to get Bukayo Saka into more optimal shooting positions. I deduce that having failed to secure any one of Rogers, Vinicius or Alvarez during the summer, Arteta and his staff had to consider how to juice more goals from the Arsenal orange with existing personnel.
Christos Tzolis was Arsenal’s only attacking signing and if he simply replaces the output of Trossard and Martinelli from last season, he will have been a wildly successful signing. I think getting Saka into more shooting positions is a simple case of banking on the team’s best attacker to do a little bit more.
When Arteta talked about Declan Rice no longer being a ‘lighthouse’, I think it is an acknowledgement of two things. 1- that Rice is being tasked with doing more in the final third this season and 2- a midfield of him, Bruno and Odegaard ought to operate more like a carousel where all three players are eights in the aggregate.
What I mean by this is that they are all capable of playing as sixes, eights and tens simultaneously within games. There was a move towards greater flexibility in midfield when Martin Zubimendi signed last summer. Whereas Thomas Partey and Jorginho were players who had to sit at the base of midfield for mobility reasons, Zubimendi and Rice offered the opportunity for both players to sit or push forward depending on the phase of play.
I think the signing of Bruno Guimaraes has furthered this sense that the midfield operates flexibly and the upshot is that Declan Rice is becoming far more creative this season. It’s not the first time that Arteta has asked Rice to be more impactful in the final third.
Towards the end of the 2024-25 season, with Arsenal suffering with attacking injuries and playing Mikel Merino upfront, [Rice was asked to push forward more often](https://arseblog.com/2025/03/rice-is-the-key-ingredient/). This season so far, Rice’s data is shape shifting yet again towards creativity and away from his more rumbustious qualities.
2025-26
2026-27
Assists
0.15
0.61
Successful passes
54.16
71.67
Line breaking passes
12.89
23.64
Successful dribbles
0.41
0.61
Touches
80.42
92.42
As you can see from the table (all data taken from Fotmob and expressed per 90 minutes), Rice’s creative statistics are all trending upwards compared to last season. He has four assists already this season. But as well as his creative data trending upwards, some of his more out of possession duties are reducing ever so slightly too.
2025-26
2026-27
Distance covered
11.4km
10.9km
Sprinting
224m
212m
Number of sprints
10.40
9.85
Defensive contribution
10.95
9.24
Tackles
2.03
1.36
Recoveries
5.23
3.94
In short, Rice is doing a little less scurrying and collecting and a little more passing and creating. I suspect the logic for this is the same as the clear decision to ask Saka to take up more shooting opportunities. Arsenal have to create more threat this season without having really improved their final third personnel in the market.
That being the case, Mikel Arteta has asked two of his best players to adapt their games in pursuit of that aim. It reminds me somewhat of that Simpsons episode where Marge finds a cheap Chanel dress and she keeps redesigning it so as not to let on to some rich friends that she cannot afford to buy another Chanel dress.
The signing of Bruno Guimaraes also represents another change for Rice, Partey and Jorginho were very similar players and that gave Rice a higher physical burden. The addition of Martin Zubimendi changed that somewhat and both players adopted a mix and match partnership whereby they would consistently swap between deeper and more advanced positions.
The rise to prominence of Myles Lewis-Skelly offers a very different and very useful variety in midfield too with his press resistance and ability to progress through dribbling. Bruno Guimaraes is a relatively similar player to Rice, capable of playing deeper and in more advanced areas, as well as being highly attuned to the physical demands of being a Premier League central midfielder.
We are yet to see exactly how a Rice, Odegaard and Bruno midfield will operate in practice; but we can see that Rice’s role has evolved yet again. It speaks to his quality and his intelligence- at West Ham the iteration of his partnership with Tomas Soucek evolved season on season too. Sometimes he would sit deeper and allow Soucek to push on and some seasons he would play in a more advanced position with Soucek behind him.
Rice has always shown a high aptitude for adding bows and whistles to his game season on season. Once again, he is being asked to do something a little bit different by Mikel Arteta and he is responding in kind. His capacity for learning and application is, for my money, unrivalled by any English midfielder I have seen in the last 25 years.