Mikel Arteta has urged Declan Rice to expand his set-piece repertoire by working on long throws, citing the clear impact Brentford have made this season from that specific delivery. Brentford have scored three times from long throws this term, while Arsenal remain without a goal from that scenario despite their broader set-piece strength.<\/p>\n
Arteta pointed to Michael Kayode\u2019s influence and asked his midfielder to emulate the standard the Brentford full back has established. “A massive weapon,” Arteta said of the Italian\u2019s throw-ins. “We all know that. It is a very chaotic situation\u2014it is very difficult to predict what is going to happen.”<\/p>\n
When asked why Rice does not yet deploy long throws to the same extent, Arteta offered a measured response on development and belief. “Who is [as good as Kayode]? Everything has to evolve. I don\u2019t know how good [Kayode] was a year ago, or two years ago or three years ago. I know how good Declan was at taking set pieces three or four years ago and I know how good he is now.<\/p>\n
“It does not happen overnight. Things have to be trained, evolved and tweaked. And the player has to believe as well, which is key. When you look at Declan, he can do almost everything you require him to do.”<\/p>\n
Arteta\u2019s comments come with some short-term fitness concerns. Rice, who has two goals and five assists in all competitions this season, was withdrawn in the 83rd minute of the meeting with Brentford after showing signs of a problem. Cristhian Mosquera added his name to a list of defensive absentees that already includes William Saliba and Gabriel. Arteta criticised the jam-packed schedule after the full-time whistle and was hoping Rice\u2019s issue would not be serious.<\/p>\n
Rice later reported no serious concern and made himself available for the upcoming game. In an off-camera meeting with Sky Sports News, Rice revealed he was “fine” and able to feature at Villa Park on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arteta urged Declan Rice to add long throws to his set-piece range after watching Brentford success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4888,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,728,172],"tags":[1081,1162,199],"class_list":["post-4889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-brentford","category-epl","tag-adaptation","tag-analytics","tag-cristhian-mosquera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}