Paul Scholes has taken aim at Declan Rice\u2019s visible emotion during matches, arguing that such displays can undermine the calm required in a title race. The former Manchester United midfielder made the comments on his podcast, The Good, The Bad & The Football .<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Roy [Keane] was getting the team together and leading the team really well, there was a certain calmness about it,\u201d Scholes said. \u201cWhen I look at Declan Rice, he almost looks too emotional.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s lively, he\u2019s, \u2018Come on! Come on! Come on!\u2019 And then he makes his mistake. When you\u2019re going for a league title, when you\u2019ve got tough games, there has to be a calmness about you. I think potentially [he\u2019s a captain]. It\u2019s just when I look at him now, he\u2019s so emotional.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scholes singled out a moment immediately before Kolo Muani\u2019s goal, adding: \u201cI don\u2019t like all that [Rice geeing up the crowd just moments before Kolo Muani\u2019s goal]. I don\u2019t like people being so emotional like that. People will call me a miserable b—— and say that you don\u2019t want to take emotion out of the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd of course we don\u2019t, we want emotion but it has to be in the right way. Scoring goals and celebrating, that\u2019s great. But game-management in game situations, there needs to be a calmness.\u201d<\/p>\n
That emphasis on composure has followed Arsenal through recent title races. Critics have pointed to a tendency to over-celebrate and to react strongly to setbacks. After dropping two points to Wolverhampton Wanderers last week, Mikel Arteta said it felt \u201clike the end of the world.\u201d He added that the entire squad was \u201cfeeling angry, upset, ashamed at some point.\u201d<\/p>\n
Opponents point to mentality as decisive. Rodri reflected on Manchester City\u2019s title success, saying, \u201cI think the difference was in here,\u201d while pointing to his temple, before adding, \u201cI think it comes down to mentality.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rice, 27-year-old, did not linger on his error. He laughed, quickly apologised to his teammates and went on to deliver a composed performance. Social media produced unflattering memes, with many drawing a comparison to Steven Gerrard and his 2013\u201314 slip in a decisive match.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Scholes questioned Declan Rice’s visible emotion and linked it to Arsenal’s wider composure issue…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7111,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,969],"tags":[1006,1493,1492],"class_list":["post-7112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-premier-league","tag-captaincy","tag-game-management","tag-mentality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7112","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=7112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}