Rice is not an exciting prospect - but he is a good player and seems to have the skill set to come into our midfield. With his PL and international experience I would expect him to integrate quickly rather than take the year that others have done. Which means that value wise he needs to be at least equivalent to Grealish - who two years ago had only 90 PL appearances behind him (+90 in Championship) compared to 200 for Rice - and Grealish still has less international caps. He might not have the flair of Grealish - but in many ways he is much more of a Pep type player who will help to dominate the midfield.
I also noticed in a couple of WHU games that he was playing a more advanced role than DM - so perhaps he can replace Gundo.
So I would expect us to be negotiated up to WHU valuation - whether Arsenal will match that is up to them, but at least they will have been forced into paying at least 100m which might put other bids in jeopardy - and forcing each other to stretch budgets is the competition that the Directors of Football are in.
Then it is up to Rice - I can understand the attraction of Arsenal. He doesn‘t need to move his family, Arteta is a good coach who has improved young players, they have CL football. They challenged us last year and he will improve them to help challenge again - and there will be an excitement in anticipating being a key part of taking Arsenal one place higher. Or does he want the challenge of coming to Manchester into a team that has won everything and proving that he has the ability to play at that level, for the best coach in the world and maintain the standards that have already been set. It’s up to him and and what is important to him through the prime years of his career,
