It is a measure of Arsenal\u2019s success in this season\u2019s Champions League that their trip to Eindhoven was such a strange one. Mikel Arteta\u2019s side required only five games to guarantee top spot in Group B, which meant that their sixth was little more than a chance for the Arsenal manager to experiment with his side.<\/p>\n
A glorified training session? Perhaps. But that does not mean it was not worthwhile. Arteta used it as an opportunity to provide opportunities to the fringe players in his squad, to see who might propel themselves into contention. He also used it to try something new: Declan Rice, the \u00a3105 million midfielder, played most of the second half in the centre of defence.<\/p>\n
Rice has played at the back before, in his early days at West Ham United. A long time has passed since then, though, and he is certainly not considered a defender any more.<\/p>\n
Perhaps it was an indication, then, of Arteta\u2019s Plan B \u2013 which we might also refer to as the \u2018no-Saliba plan\u2019. The loss of William Saliba to injury last season\u00a0proved fatal to Arsenal\u2019s title hopes. Is it possible that, if such a situation were to happen again, Rice would be the man to step in?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to try,\u201d said Arteta. \u201cIf we have an emergency we have to understand and be sure we can fill that gap in the right way. He has a lot of composure on the ball, he wins a lot of duels and he has done it in the past. He is a good option.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is a measure of Arsenal\u2019s success in this season\u2019s Champions League that their trip to Eindhoven was such a strange one. Mikel Arteta\u2019s side required only five games to guarantee top spot in Group B, which meant that their sixth was little more than a chance for the Arsenal manager to experiment with his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":10796,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[415],"class_list":["post-10788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-arteta"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10788"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10797,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10788\/revisions\/10797"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}