Declan Rice has named one Manchester City player as being particularly hard to play against.
After making his £105m move to Arsenal from West Ham United during the previous summer transfer window, the midfielder has played against City in both of the two Premier League meetings between Pep Guardiola and Mikel Arteta’s sides this season.
With both clubs vying to win the Premier League title with only a handful of games left to play, the Gunners record signing has been reminiscing over his first league meeting with the Blues as an Arsenal player and highlighted one player in the City team he found it tricky to face off against.
Rice says one Man City player was so hard to play against
In a recent interview with The Atheltic where he reflected on Arsenal’s 1-0 win over City back in October at the Emirates, Rice had this to say about Rico Lewis in one particular moment of the game.
He said: “I’m hoping that Rico Lewis is going to jump (to Raya), so that I can then make a move. It’s kind of like a game of chess.
“Lewis is actually in a good position there because he’s defending two of us (Gabriel and Rice). When I move off him, he’s got a problem obviously with Jorgi going the other way.
“We work on that a lot – our midfielders working on different lines and working in relation to one another.
“So if one moves one way, the other moves the other way and mostly diagonally. And, as you can see in that clip, that’s what happened.
“But I remember this game, it was hard to play out because Rico Lewis was taking up some really tough positions where he’s almost doing two roles.”
Rico Lewis showed his intelligence against Arsenal
Looking back over this game, Lewis had 36 touches of the ball across the 68 minutes he was on the pitch for and was able to accurately complete 29 of the 32 passes he attempted.
The 19-year-old also won three of the four ground duels he was involved in.
However, with Rice highlighting how hard Lewis made it to play for Arsenal in terms of the positions he took up on the pitch, this shows just how intelligent the youngster is and how much he’s learned from Guardiola.
