As things stand, The Gunners risk losing Declan Rice’s transfer swoop to the Citizens. For the better part of Thursday, all reports suggested Pep Guardiola was working on a move to convince the 24-year-old to join his project. As per the Sun, the Citizens are so convinced Rice is the player to replace Ilkay Gundogan that they are keen to match West Ham’s £100 million asking price, and not just that, they are eager to offer him a £200k a week deal like West Ham were keen to provide him with to convince him to stay. It is not certain that City will win Rice’s race, but if they do, what does that mean?
Manchester City could have the strongest midfield ever.
We recently highlighted how the team that unleashes the strongest midfield between Arsenal and Manchester City could be the real deal next season In the end, if Arteta fails to sign Rice, you’d agree that whoever he signs wouldn’t take his midfield to the heights the Hammers would have. On the other hand, even with the departure of Gundogan and probably Bernardo Silva, Guardiola could still unleash one of the strongest midfields, featuring Rodri/Kovacic, De Bruyne, and Rice. With a strong midfield, Manchester City could easily continue their dominance.
Arsenal may be forced to pay what Brighton wants for Caicedo.
A few days ago, reports suggested the Gunners no longer wanted to sign Caicedo. His swoop was considered expensive, with claims the Seagulls are asking for as much as West Ham wants for Rice. After missing out on Rice, Caicedo is the next logical move for Arteta. The Ecuadorian midfielder is not Rice, but he has everything in him to take Arsenal to the next level. The 21-year-old was the first choice for Arteta in the winter transfer window when he had a desire to bolster his midfield. After adding Havertz to take over the Xhaka role, Caicedo could play the Partey role and be deputised by Romeo Lavia, who is also tipped to join.
Gooners will question the club’s transfer strategy.
Failing to sign Mykhailo Mudryk in the winter transfer window angered many Gooners, who lost trust in the club’s transfer strategy. For the last few months, Mudryk’s poor start to life at Stamford Bridge has softened the Emirates faithfuls’ hearts, but missing out on Rice will be another blow to the trust Edu and Arteta have built with them. If Rice moves to City and excels, questions will be asked about why the Gunners didn’t pay what West Ham wanted; the notion is that a straight £100 million bid would have sealed the deal.
What else could Rice’s move to the Etihad signify to you as a Gooner?
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If we can’t pay an extra 10 million then that’s sad. He’s an excellent player and will strengthen City
Same old story unfortunately
RICE est beaucoup trop cher. En finale de la Ligue Europa, il n’a pas fait un grand match.
Le payer autant qu’un serial buteur est une absurdité.
On a raté MUDRYCK et on a bien fait.
On ratera (peut-être) RICE, maïs rien n’est perdu. Il y a CAICED0 (un peu moins cher), LAVIA (il faut y aller), MILENKOVIC, voire ONANA.
Tu as completement raison, André. Je ne lui estime pas, ( je lui appelle “Soggy Rice”) et dans le match contre Fiorentina il a bien montré qu’il n’est pas au niveau de un régisseur ou un bon défenseur. Les Rosbifs l’estiment beaucoup, exageré selon mon avis parce que il est “Anglais”. Nous pouvons bien vivre sans Declan Rice.
Someone tell me why Man City still haven’t had a points deduction or fine or ban on transfers
Over 100 financial breaches ! And it continues!
Yes that’s true. Even if he is only worth 70mil or so but if he is better than our current players or make our team stronger it is better to overspend then not getting player. After all what matters is how strong team we can build to win the league. How much we spent or how much we saved is not going to win us league. How mancity over spent on grealish and though his price is still not that much nor he is regular but overspending is justified if you win the league. But in our case we should be absolutely sure it’s not going be another Pepe story and also te player is definitely going to improve the squad. And another advantage is that we can prevent our competitor getting a top class player.
It will mean nothing to Arsenal fans.
But I fear it will mean far more to Edu should our bid to sign Rice fail.
A failure to sign THE top priority signing will mean that Arsenal may be looking at a plan B or C or D i.e. spending a lot of money potentially on a player we didn’t plan to bid for.
This is exactly the problem we had with Wenger and exactly why we had to get rid of so much deadwood.
Time will tell..
If we do fail to sign Rice we should look at one of Valverde, Camavinga or Tchouameni at Real Madrid – with the arrival of Bellingham one of them might possibly be on his way..
@Me, I agree with you, we can add any 2/3 of Zubimendi, Kalvin Phillips, Onana, Valverde/Camavinga better than having Rice and Caicedo.
Our creativity and strength would be awesome, I really wish Arteta would read through, well I believe Arteta and Edu are cooking something beneath.
The problem we had with AW, was that kronkie didn’t support him, so we couldn’t replace like for like, while we had sell our best players.
That hasn’t been the case with MA, as it seems he had to sell “deadwood”, has been backed to the tune of nearly £500,000,000 and that’s without any new signings.
There has to be a ceiling that our club wants to pay for ANY player, whether he’s our top priority or a squad player and, IF WHU are intent on wanting more than that ceiling, then so be it.
I won’t blame anybody except WHU for wanting too much and Rice for not standing up for himself, if he really wants to sign for The Arsenal.
Ken I agree with you. The only thing I hope is that if WH want more for Rice than we are willing to pay that we move on quickly to our plan B. In the past, we have spent way too much time pursuing players who were never going to come to Arsenal (Vlahovic) or negotiating with clubs who were never going to lower their asking price to our best offer (Brighton this past winter).
Personally as an Arsenal fan won’t mean much as the deal isn’t done and no guarantee it will be. Yes he’s an excellent player and be great to have him but Arsenal have always set a limit on how much they’ll spend on a player so if city come in with a higher amount that’s it. Also Rice could turn to West Ham and say I only want to move to Arsenal and nobody else then won’t make a difference. If he decides to go to city then he’s not really bothered about playing for us.
If we don’t get Declan Rice, don’t fret. Both Nicolo Barella and Sergej Milinković-Savić together would cost the same as Declan Rice and would give us two of the best European midfielders. In fact they could win us the PL and makes us as strong as the ‘Invincibles’.
This saga has become very tiresome. I hope City sign him today so we can talk about other things. If we lose him not a big loss. He is not the difference between winning the title or not.
Its very irrritating that regular bottom half teams are able to demand high fees confidently while us who are always on the top cant sell a player to save our lives!
How much did we sell Henry, Fabregas, RVP, Sanchez as few examples. If it were us buying them we would have been quoted 150M.
How much will we get for Partey, Ben and Jesus if we list them today? Probably 25% of what we paid for them.
This is all a tactical ploy by West Ham to squeeze everything they can. Of course they wouldn’t accept any opening bid since they know their player is on demand. The City angle is a big bluff, they’re up against it with financial fair play and not about to make more waves. I suspect this one will go on for at least another few weeks.
West Ham May end up bottling it if they play hard ball for too long. We can shift to other targets. No need to panic at this point. $100M is a bit investment for just 1 player. Our strategy the past 2 years has worked so far (buying young $30-40M players). No reason to panic now. I know we’re shifting a bit with the Havertz buy (we needed more bang in the front line anyway).
How cool is that? Thanks.
City is a dream for any player meaning most players would go for Citygivem the choice between Arsenal or City. The main reason why Declan is leaving the Hammers is to win trophies. Arsenal are a potential for trophies but City present an even better prospect. Hope he signs for Arsenal in the end.
A dream? Really? Are you a player yourself? On what level? If not a player, how do you know? The babyblues are cheating on penalties all the time. How many peneltier did they get the 22/23 season? And how many penelties did Arsenal get? Less then half. Nine pes vs four. There you have the five points… and more. Babyblues stinks. Babyblues are cheaters. Football must find another way to punish fouls in the 18 yard box, or the sport will die.
The premier league could be on the verge of losing its prestige in the world of football and become a one team league as PSG in France.
When that happens it will be down to sheer greed,
Two types of greeds am seing developing here.
On one hand, is the type like West Ham who are willing to sell their sold to the highest bidder.
On the other hand a state own company with unlimited amount of funds at their disposal, who dosen’t care one bit about the quality of thriving competition, want to win at all cost effectively neutralizing the very things that makes the english premier league what it is today.
There was a time when the league would never allow this kid of thing to happen, I remembered when city had showed an intrest in Van Dyke, it was rumored at the time they cannot allow that, Van Dyke to join the Citizen, in step Liverpool and the rest his history.
Things are changing fast and it’s not for the good of the sport.
Should have been, sell their soul
Couldn’t agree more Gunsmike
Gibberish nonsense. Big money has always been sloshing around at too few clubs (including Arsenal). And if West Ham want to claw some of that back, what is wrong with that? Declan is our best player and we don’t want to lose him – but if he goes we want to be properly recompensed. What’s so hard to understand about that? Or maybe you think we should just let Arsenal tell us what they want to pay, and we’ll go with that? As for your Van Dyke point – Liverpool made a bigger bid than Man City, and were accepted on that basis. That’s how transfers work – or maybe you think Southampton were just being greedy?
It’s greed on the part of WH. There is little doubt about that no matter how many insults you throw around.
West Ham obviously want to make as much money as they can out of the deal. Whilst one can’t blame them for this they are unlikely to fall into dire straits if they should sell him for £80 or £90mill which many would still consider overpriced.
Unfortunately, it is also true that the state owned clubs have facilitated this kind of ridiculous situation.
The story was told about the greedy dog.
West Ham has move Rice price over three to four time over the last year, there is a report yesterday that David Moise privately talk that Rice is value at £150 million.
Hope’s the Bubbles get what they want, but when you earn money under these sort of shenanigans it never work well in the end.
And to think about Rice’s market value is £77M. How West Ham jumped on £100M+ is bizarre.
Hey Mister Westham, maybe you didn’t know this, but we don’t insult people for airing their views on here.
Not a lot, no player is bigger than our club.
The club is the players and the fans who support them. Without them the club is nothing.
That is so true
with chelsea and city throwing money around inflating transfer prices we are becoming la liga II madrid barcelona, both city and chelsea have arab backers
Oh Happy Day. Totally overrated
Guardiola, Tuchel, Arteta, Ten Hag wants him, yet he is overrated. Interesting.
So let the other coaches throw in their bids, why all this talk yet we are the only club bidding. WH want 100 or 120 or 150 can’t keep track we offered 90 if another club come with a better offer let them have him and lets move on he is not worth 100.
Spot on, there are a lot of quality players out there.
If we don’t get Rice I want Edu out the club. How many more times can we get embarrassed in the transfer market. Over paying for Kai and loosing both Rice and Caicedo would be an absolute disaster. I cant think of a single other player who could come in and make an immediate impact like one of those mentioned above.
We haven’t signed Havertz or missed out on Rice or Caicedo yet.
If we signed someone like Valverde or Tchouamene that would be better than either Rice or Caicedo.
I doubt that Edu of Arteta have any say as to how much AFC is prepared to pay, & the deal structure for any potential transfer target. Final call will be with the owner.
And he seems quite happy to splash the cash based on the last couple of windows.
Rice would become an instant legend if he joined AFC and we went on to claim top prizes. I really hope we win the race for his signing because we need better homegrown talent and Rice is a top player
We need Rice more than City does. If we are not going to pay or play the way WHU want we should walk away though. We will be a joke otherwise and Edu will have a major question mark against him. We shouldn’t be penny pinching if we want to get him off the street, but at the same time we should not be held to ransom. What is Plan B? Surely not Caicedo, I think he will be also be expensive.
The rumoured (“imminent” for the past 3 days) Man City bid has yet to materialise which means that Rice has not yet been convinced that it’s a move he wants to make. City won’t make an official bid unless he’s agreed to the move & there’s an outline agreement on terms.
There are points for & against signing for either team beyond the transfer fee & wages & as his family is closely involved there’s not a cash hungry agent pushing on that level alone. Should he chose City it won’t simply be down to the £’s. Possible bit part at City or main man at AFC ???
From what I read in the press, City is offering 75m guaranteed and a further 15m in add-ons. And I’m like wondering: is that the same as Arsenal are reported to be offering?
Or maybe, the difference is on the conditions attached to the add-ons? If so, Arsenal could stand a good chance of getting their man since, as we are told, that is the player’s preferred destination
I’m in the same frame if mind as Souness. He’s fit, midfield grafter that has no exceptional qualities outside this. He hasn’t got Partey’s finesse and quality of passing and Partey doesn’t have Rice’ engine and stamina. I sure I’ve said this same thing on another post regarding Rice but I really hope we don’t get into a stupid bidding war for a player that will not give us any noticeable advantage over our rivals. Let City or whoever have him as he’s definitely not worth the money being asked for him
Rice to Man City is virtually done while Arsenal have been messing around City have come in with exactly what West Ham want so let’s forget Rice now it’s not happening probably compensate with some league 2 midfield player completely pathetic Arsenal will never challenge or win anything again be a laughing stock just like the spuds!
Clearly, City have waited to gauge what WH are willing to accept before stepping in. If we hadn’t been the one making the bids, they would have been. WH have wisely dragged their heels on the deal, knowing that City and/or others are preparing to bid.
You can’t be so naïve to think that Man City were not aware and had no prior interest in him, and then only tried to sign him because we took too long to seal the deal…
We’re talking about a 100m transfer of an established England international here, not some unknown wonderkid playing in the favelas.
No it’s not Mark, stop being silly!
If he goes to City it means he’s not coming to us, that’s all. It will also mean that all the talk of him only wanting to come to Arsenal was total 🥜
I’ve said a few times this week ,that I did read that his preferred club was Man Utd but they are after Mount but they could come in for Rice if Chelsea price him out of a move .
For fans like me it means I can moan about the club even more .
To be fair, you don’t need much encouragement.
Sorry Dan, I couldn’t resist 😂
Meant as a friendly comment 😊
Wow Dan, that was a weird statement. Who ever heard you moaning lol!
I don’t even rate Rice so was ment as a joke (not very good at them sorry )
Actually I did see a joke today ,tickled me .
We should be going for Declan’s brother Muller ,who’s better at corners or his cousins Basmati ,jasmine and Bomba who are a versatile trio .
I tried 😂
How about boiled or egg fried? 😊
Boiled absolutely not ,fried rice maybe ,but would stick with other Jasmine all day long .
Thai food 🫡
To the fans, it won’t do much damage other than the AFTV-like usual meltdown. For the Club i.e. Mikel Arteta, Edu Gsper, Garlick, and Tim Lewis, it would be a monumental cockup. these guys have been chasing Rice for the past 15 months, they’ve had many meetings with the player’s family. Arteta has personally met the Rices on several occasions. Tim Lewis has gone a step further and had direct talks with Westham CEO. Edu and Arteta have literally pegged their plans on getting Declan Rice. The player knows this, his family knows that and that’s why even as we speak, this deal is Arsenal’s to lose. All they have to do is match City’s offer, and not even personal terms ’cause Rice thinks Arteta’s project suits him more. It’s weird that Immediately Westham leaked the “imminent” City bid that has yet to come to fruition, a number of reliable sports correspondents who’ve in the past reported accurately on westham immediately put out articles clarifying Rice’s preference despite the imminent bid. The Guardian was first I think, followed by other journos who’ve reported accurately on Westham in the past. This isn’t some crazy hopium I’m just stating what’s been reported and I think there’s a tug-of-war between Rice and Westham. It’s a funny game of poker! It’ll be interesting to see who comes out on top!
I believe in Arteta and Edu. I am sure Arteta wants him, but not at any price, and I have full confidence that if we don’t get Rice they have a contingency plan.
Would I like to see Rice play for Arsenal? Yes. Would I want us to throw a shitload of money out the window for it to happen? No. Let’s not compete with an entire, goddamn country.
If we lose Rice, it wouldn’t mean much to me. But if Edu and Arteta claims that Rice is not worth £100M, is Harvertz worth £65M? Just asking.
I don’t understand why these discussions drag on .. If Arsenal wanted a player for some time then surely they could informally agree a price with selling club b4 transfer window opens ?
If WHU is dragging, Arsenal should just pull the plug and look elsewhere immediately. That way then WHU can not bargain with City . That will be lesson for other clubs
Unlike Chelsea Man City don’t chuck money around now, even they have a ceiling so WH should be a bit careful regarding Rice the two main competitors might walk away – then what?
We haven’t exactly been underspending over the past few years, in fact our 5 year net spend is double that of City. Buying Haaland for a measly £50m+ will probably turn out to be the buy of the century? If Rice is worth 100m+ what is Haaland worth? As usual the silly season is upon us again!!
Haalands price tag is abit of a myth from what I read and his weekly wage is something stupid which does not get reported ,over half a million a week and the transfer had so many clauses in it , your probably looking and mbappe numbers but city get around all that with silly sponsors.
IF Rice ends up at Citeh, it will be down to Arsenals penny-pinching and not because they didn’t have every chance to sign him.
Pay the asking price and at least compete for stuff!
Arsenal fan base need to realize that blind optimism is worst that constant pessimism. Kronke did famously say he didn’t buy Arsenal to win trophies and by the evidence nothing has changed. KSE is using the loyalty of the fans to make money and nothing else. The problem is that they refuse to sell to an owner who is interested in winning so we are stuck in this merry go round. IMO Arsenal will NEVER win significant titles as long as Kronke owns the club so fans in England need to protest in numbers and maybe, just maybe it will pressure KSE into selling.
Yet he as backed Edu And Arteta to a tune of 400+million,plus probably another 200 by the summers end ,we have outspent most teams in the last 5 seasons except Chelsea and Utd but not far off ,our problem is the selling side of things ,when you read rumours of partey getting sold to juve for 17 million you have to ask questions ,you have players like Tierney and Xhaka who should both be sold for a good fee but we hang onto them for to long and before we know the season started and they get left on the bench and go for peanuts the season after because they get no game time ,our selling side of the club is awful ,always as been for as long as I can remember,what’s our record ?AOC 5 years ago for 35 million .and we have now bought Havertz for 65 million ,a Chelsea cast off to help them get sign a player we should have been bidding for all along .
I say let Rice go to city and we try and get Phillips from City. He will be much cheaper and cannot see his game time improving if Rice arrives. If he can get back to his form from before he went to City then I would suggest we will be getting a comparable player to Rice for half the price.