Declan Rice

[Vester]

Na come on Declan rice is actually really good. With Pep he will become an absolutely beast in the middle.

If we sign him, I hope you are right! My expectations however is that he would probably be the worst player in the team. I just dont rate him at all and fear his lack of pace and mobility could make him look almost comically out of place in a team of Citys level. But if we do sign him I would obviously hope I'm wrong. I have been wrong many times before so what do I know haha :)

 

[Gumzy97]

To go from Bellingham to Rice is depressing.

 

[blueparrot]

We don't play with fullbacks. Stones will simply slot back into CB in place if Akanji. Stones is also better than Akanji as a CB so there's that. Rice will take stones place of stepping into the midfield since rice is better as a "midfielder" than stones as that's were he plays. Out of possession he comes into CB where he has played a lot before earlier in his career. Tactically for the way we are playing right now, Rice would be a very good addition.

Don’t see that it makes us any better than the way we use Stones now and would be a pointless wast of money.I f Pep thinks different then as I say fine. I just can’t see how it’s different or better to what we do now.Rice is a good player and will move to a better team, better midfielder than Stones alongside Rodri, don’t think so.
It’s also not the position we need to spend money and effort on if we are losing Gundogan and Silva, we have more pressing needs.

 

[blueparrot]

To go from Bellingham to Rice is depressing.

We won’t because they don’t play the same position.

 

[Tugay One Cup]

The only reason why this thread is active is because of the Bellingham reports earlier.

It doesn't really make any sense whatsoever.

 

[Damanino]

Rice does not have much of the attacking skills that Gundo has. dictating tempo is one thing, you need top brain to do that in this City team. Rice does not have that. he also wasted half of his career at a club plays so differently than us will be hard to retrain him....

Frenkie de Jong seems a much better fit for what we need if Gundo leaves. giving them Laporte and 20m for De Jong could be a smooth business as long as he is not adamant he wants to stay at Barca. Pep rates him very highly.

keep Bernardo tho, we need him and extremely hard to replace as he is quite a unique player.

 

[FantasyIreland]

To go from Bellingham to Rice is depressing.

To go from Philips to Rice isn't.

 

[WallyA]

I think he'd be world class as a CB over just "good" as a CDM, more destroyer type, and not at the level some of the media make him out to be.

But we currently have Stones playing as a CB pushing into CDM, which funny enough might be the perfect hybrid position for Rice.

 

[CatMan]

He'd be another Jack Rodwell; completely out of his depth!

 

[bell_mcfc]

I think Rice is a Pep player. Multiple positions, great potential.

I wouldn’t see it as a alternative to Bellingham in what we are looking for in a player but in terms of transfer fee.

A few weeks back we all thought it was 130 on Jude, 30 on Kovacic. Now I see it as 80-100 on Rice and more money available for someone else. We were never going to sign both Rice and Jude, but we want players with both their attributes.