Declan Rice issued a blunt assessment of Arsenal\u2019s position ahead of the north London derby against Tottenham Hotspur, warning that recent poor results could erode the club\u2019s strong standing across four competitions. The midfielder spoke to Sky Sports and addressed the mounting narratives around the team.<\/p>\n
Rice dismissed the “outside noise” and the idea of ‘bottling’ but was clear about the consequences of continued inconsistent results. He said the squad “fully believe” in one another and stressed the need to maintain focus. “And we enjoy it every day,” he added. “Of course you do. This is our job\u2014we\u2019re playing for Arsenal, we\u2019re in the final of the [Carabao] Cup, in the next round of the FA Cup, in the [last 16 of the] Champions League, first in the Premier League.<\/p>\n
“We need some perspective about where we are, but also we need to look a bit bigger to understand that if we carry on doing what we\u2019re doing in terms of the results, it isn\u2019t going to last.”<\/p>\n
Rice underlined Arsenal\u2019s capability to win across competitions, pointing to their earlier domestic and European form, but insisted the players must “pick that up” quickly. “We\u2019ve got to be switched on. You\u2019re going to be ready for everything that\u2019s thrown at you because that\u2019s what is needed for these final games,” he said.<\/p>\n
Arsenal still lead the Premier League with Manchester City close behind, leaving the prospect that the Gunners could be overtaken and finish second. In cup competitions Arsenal face decisive fixtures: the Carabao Cup final against Manchester City at Wembley on March 22, a Champions League two-legged tie against one of Borussia Dortmund, Atalanta, Bayer Leverkusen or Olympiacos shortly before then, and an FA Cup fifth-round match against League One\u2019s Mansfield Town on March 7.<\/p>\n
The season\u2019s extremes are straightforward: Arsenal could win multiple major trophies for the first time in English football history, or they could finish 2025\/26 without silverware and extend their major-trophy drought into a seventh year. For now the title challenge remains in their own hands, but results must improve if that position is to hold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rice warned Arsenal that recent poor results could undo a season where cups and title still possible<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7009,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,1067,969],"tags":[1066,1047],"class_list":["post-7010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-carabao-cup","category-premier-league","tag-carabao-cup","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7010","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=7010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}