Forget the £105m fee - Declan Rice can make Arsenal champions (2024)

The money is eye-watering, even by the standards of modern-day football.

For Arsenal, it is also a brave new world. Students of the club’s history might be aware that Declan Rice’s next employers once advertised the role of manager with the words: “Only people who will not spend big money on transfers need apply.”

That was 1925, in a publication called the Athletic News, and led to the appointment of Herbert Chapman, the most celebrated of all Arsenal managers until the mid-1990s arrival of Arsene Wenger and the infamous London Evening Standard billboard of “Arsene Who?”

Wenger was also expected to assemble championship-winning teams without having the financial clout of other clubs. “We don’t buy superstars,” he said once, “we make them.” And, for a long time, it became a running theme to hear him talking about the number of category-A players — Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale, Paul Pogba; on and on — who Arsenal had lost in the process.

Something has changed, plainly, if the modern Arsenal can bring in Rice for £105million ($132.5m) and, in the process, barge a club with Manchester City’s wealth out of the way.

Rice’s imminent move five miles across town from West Ham United’s London Stadium to the Emirates Stadium means Arsenal will obliterate their current transfer record, set in the summer of 2019 when Nicolas Pepe joined from French club Lille for £72million. Yet, the most striking detail is what they had to do, and who they have had to see off, to make it happen.

Because if they are willing to outbid City, we can safely assume Rice’s new employers are utterly determined to make up for missing out on last season’s title by coming back stronger and better prepared in 2023-24.

And they just might do it.

Without making any wild predictions, this could conceivably be the piece of transfer business that upgrades Arsenal from being a ‘nearly’ team into one with the wit and gumption to finish the job and be champions again after a 20-year wait. At the very least, Rice’s arrival should mean they are better equipped to sustain a title challenge, having led by eight points at one stage in the middle of last season before a costly late run of two wins in eight games.

This is not to underestimate City’s almost relentless pursuit of brilliance, their ambitions to create a long-lasting dynasty and manager Pep Guardiola’s almost freakish ability to make sure complacency, that corrosive byproduct of sustained success, does not take hold.

Don’t forget, though, that Arsenal spent 248 days at the top of the table last season. No other side in the 31-year Premier League era has spent longer in first place without winning the title. Yes, Mikel Arteta’s side fell short at the business end. But they also gave a treble-winning, history-making City team an almighty scare that lasted well into April. They were not far off a historic season of their own.

Rice’s arrival will help to soothe the pain from that ordeal. At the same time, it sends a clear message that last season’s runners-up have turned their thoughts to going one better next time. His presence should lift the entire club at a time when everybody connected with Arsenal could probably be forgiven for feeling a bit sorry for themselves.

This is one of the reasons why Arteta has pushed so hard for Rice this summer. The Arsenal manager was absolutely vital in making sure Rice knew exactly how much he was wanted in north London, where he would play in his team and the potential glories of helping a club with such a history of achievement return to the top of English football.

Newcastle United did something similar after the ordeal of surrendering a 12-point January lead to enable Manchester United to finish as champions again in the 1995-96 season. Newcastle’s response that summer was to sign Alan Shearer from Blackburn Rovers for £15million, then a British transfer record, fighting off competition from Old Trafford in the process.

It ended badly for Newcastle because of the disruption at boardroom level that led to the manager, Kevin Keegan, resigning the following January. They were fourth at the time.

Arsenal, however, have none of those issues. The clear impression is that they have done their commiserating and everything is focused, once again, on trying to remove Guardiola’s grip, finger by finger, from a trophy that has not been in Arsenal’s possession since Chelsea succeeded them as champions in the spring of 2005.

Fellow midfielder Kai Havertz’s £65million signing from Chelsea adds another penetrative layer to a team who scored 88 times in the Premier League last season, Arsenal’s highest goals-per-game ratio since 1934-35. If everything goes to plan, the 22-year-old Netherlands international defender Jurrien Timber should also arrive from Ajax in a deal worth more than £40million.

Rice will operate in largely the same role he played for West Ham, where even a casual observer could note the England international was the man who mattered. Whether he was breaking up the opposition play or driving through the middle with the ball at his feet, Rice was at the centre of a team who finished last season by winning the Europa Conference League.

Is Rice worth such an astronomical fee?

Champions City evidently did not believe so. Chelsea, who released him as a 14-year-old, decided against it. Manchester United have concluded his boyhood pal Mason Mount is better value for just over half the fee.And, yes, there will be plenty of people who are not absolutely certain Rice warrants a place among the top 10 most expensive footballers of all time.

If you are an Arsenal fan, however, why should you worry about that?

It is 28 years since Arsenal last broke the British transfer record, with Dennis Bergkamp’s £7.5million arrival from Inter Milan; 13 days before that was trumped by Stan Collymore’s £8.5million move from Nottingham Forest to Liverpool.

Since then, Arsenal have lumped out on a few big signings. For the most part, however, they have watched other English clubs pulling off the most expensive and, at times, audacious deals. In some of their hardest moments, Arsenal have been the ones selling some of the players in question, for the simple reason they could not compete with the financial might of the Manchester clubs.

So nobody with an allegiance to Arsenal should feel particularly troubled if the relevant people at City, or any of their domestic rivals, think the Rice fee is excessive and that the real winners in this story are West Ham.

The bottom line for Arsenal is that it will be worth every penny if the master plan comes off.

That master plan has Rice at the heart of Arteta’s team. It’s a statement signing. He is young enough, at 24, to spend the next decade playing at the highest level. And nothing is more therapeutic in Arsenal’s circ*mstances than signing an elite player and pulling off a transfer that makes it absolutely clear your firm intention is to harry and hassle City to an even greater degree next season.

(Top photo: Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)

Daniel Taylor is a senior writer for The Athletic and a four-time Football Journalist of the Year, as well as being named Sports Feature Writer of the Year in 2022. He was previously the chief football writer for The Guardian and The Observer and spent nearly 20 years working for the two titles. Daniel has written five books on the sport. Follow Daniel on Twitter @DTathletic