Rice out as Arsenal look to begin 3-week recovery
There is not exactly a huge amount of Arsenal football news to get excited about this morning.
The international break has arrived at possibly the worst time, with Arsenal coming off the back of a 3-0 defeat at Brighton and now having to wait before they can put things right. Although some will argue that the break has come at a great time and given what happened at the Amex, perhaps a bit of time away from the training pitch is exactly what everyone needs.
The latest news is that Declan Rice has withdrawn from the England squad, with reports suggesting his workload is being managed. Rice played 55 games for Arsenal last season and then featured in seven of England’s eight World Cup matches, having dealt with hamstring nerve pain. He has started every Premier League game this season, as well as the Champions League trip to Napoli.
This feels less like something to panic about and more like sensible management. We have already seen what happens when players are asked to keep going indefinitely.
And Arsenal certainly do not need another injury problem.
The timing is also interesting because Rice was one of the players who struggled badly against Brighton.
That should not erase everything he has done for Arsenal, obviously, but it does highlight one of the problems with international football immediately following a poor club performance.
You lose 3-0, everyone heads off in different directions and the manager gets three weeks to think about it.
And if Mikel Arteta is anything like the man we know him to be, I suspect he will be doing rather a lot of thinking.
Brighton didn’t just beat Arsenal. They exposed them.
Arsenal were second to too many balls, struggled against Brighton’s man-to-man press and made technical mistakes in dangerous areas. Arteta himself said his players had not competed at the required level and had failed to “respect the game”. That is probably the important bit.
This wasn’t one of those games where Arsenal dominated, missed six chances and somehow lost 1-0. Brighton deserved to win.
They were more aggressive, more comfortable and better at exploiting the weaknesses Arsenal presented to them. Arsenal’s perfect start ended with their heaviest defeat in three years. But context matters.
This is still the team that won its opening four league games, conceding just once, and currently sits on 12 points from five matches. One terrible afternoon doesn’t suddenly mean the whole project has fallen apart. It means Arsenal have been given something to work on.
And perhaps that is what this extended international break should be about.
Because the next time Arsenal face a team that presses them like Brighton did, they need to look rather more like the champions they are.