Declan Rice was left shellshocked by 's demands after his first training session.

Since his £105million move from in the summer of 2023, has been one of the first names on Arteta's teamsheet. The 25-year-old was already in the company of the best midfielders in the and very much an established international, hence his nine-figure price tag.

But he found his abilities being pushed to the limit by what Arteta wanted from him. Rice wasn't sure he would be able to fulfil them and expressed his surprise at the step up in level.

That's according to Cedric Soares, who says Rice approached him after training. The Portuguese right-back, who's been without a club since his contract at the Emirates expired last summer, revealed their conversation, with Rice allegedly confessing, "It is just too many things to think."

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He told : “I remember speaking with Declan when he arrived and after training he came to talk to me. I was putting on my boots and he came to me and said, ‘Brother, I don’t know how to do it. It is just too many things to think. He wants me to receive with this foot and move there at the same time. It’s hard’.

“I told him I remember because we all have been there. My advice was to just try to flow. Mikel doesn’t expect you to understand everything in one session or two sessions. Don’t forget what brought you here. It means you already have your quality, now you just have to adapt your quality to Mikel’s idea."

Rice himself admitted to struggling early on. He felt like something of a deer in the headlights and wasn't helped by his lack of fitness heading into pre-season.

"He’ll ask us to break things down, like in terms of our pressing and where we should go: ‘If that person drops, who goes there?’. Sometimes you feel a little bit on the spot because you don’t know the answer," he told the Athletic last year.

"I wasn’t really that fit. And that was when we really tried to play our game model and you could just see I was way out of depth. I didn’t really understand anything that was going on.

"There were some good moments when I was trying to learn it, but there were also some moments where you could see I needed to improve a lot. After that, I watched a lot of videos and then on the training field tried to really improve."

Rice has undoubtedly got to grips with Arteta's ways in the 18 months since and added another element to his game in the new number eight position he took up last season. His early admissions exemplify why Arteta has restored Arsenal to title challengers, with no room for passengers in his squad.

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