Graeme Souness Critiques Declan Rice's Tactical Role
Graeme Souness has launched a scathing tactical takedown of Declan Rice, accusing Arsenal’s £105 million man of playing “old man’s football” and questioning whether he truly belongs among Europe’s elite midfielders.
The former Liverpool captain was speaking after Arsenal’s 2-1 win over title rivals Chelsea, using the performance as a springboard to dissect Rice’s game on Piers Morgan’s Football Uncensored show. For Souness, the issue is simple: Rice plays too deep, too often.
“He’s last man,” Souness said, painting a picture of a midfielder who spends more time in the back line than in the engine room. “In the build-up, he's last man. He's sitting between two centre-halves or between the centre-half and the full-back. He's last man. A lot of the time, he doesn't play in midfield.”
Souness stressed he rates Rice highly in one key area. In his eyes, nobody in England screens a defence better.
“Let me tell you what he can do. He's the best defensive midfielder in the country right now, he smells danger,” he said. But the praise came wrapped in a wider criticism: that Rice’s preference for dropping onto the toes of his centre-backs blunts his influence higher up the pitch.
“He plays too deep to affect the game,” Souness argued. “I don't think he's got enough football.”
Then came the line that will sting in any modern dressing room. Recalling his own early days as a midfielder, Souness branded Rice’s tendency to drop into the back four as a cop-out.
“In my second or third home game, I went into the back four like all midfield players do today. It's old man's football. It's cheating. An old man's way of playing midfield. You get the ball under no pressure and you play it out to the full-back.”
For Souness, that is the crux: Rice, he says, is too often taking the easy option, collecting “cheap” passes under no pressure and moving the ball on safely rather than dictating the game in the thick of midfield.
The 27-year-old’s technique and physical qualities were not in doubt. Souness called him “a lovely kicker of the ball” and praised the way he opens his body to pass. He even suggested Rice’s attributes might be better suited to a different role entirely.
“He's not a midfield player then is he? I think he may be a centre-half,” Souness said. “The ball travels faster than you do. I see him run with the ball 30 yards and pass it square. He's a lovely kicker of the ball and opens his body up well, there's nothing to dislike about him. But modern players are a bit precious. Criticism doesn't fall easily on these shoulders. He isn't the complete midfield player.”
When the conversation turned to Rice’s supposed world-class status, Souness cut that idea down without hesitation. He questioned whether the Arsenal man would make the starting XI at Europe’s superclubs.
“I'm not sure if he gets in Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Man City,” he said. For Souness, the benchmark for a truly top holding midfielder is set by players like Fernandinho and Rodri. “If you want the best in that position, City had two of them - Fernandinho and Rodri. They played in midfield.”
His tactical gripe remained the same: Rice, he claimed, builds play from too safe a zone to be mentioned in that company.
“Next time, please watch him,” Souness urged. “He goes in and gets it cheap under no pressure, a 10-yard pass off Gabriel, and passes it sideways.”
Souness even reached back to England’s painful World Cup semi-final exit against Argentina in the summer to underline his point. For him, the central midfield pairing carried a heavy share of responsibility once England took the lead.
“When England went one-nil up against Argentina, they s*** themselves. 'Oh, what do we do now?' And I put that down to Declan Rice and [Elliot] Anderson as the central midfield players in the engine room,” he claimed. “They didn't get them playing. They went back in, held hands with the back four.”
It was a brutal assessment: a record transfer fee, the tag of England’s premier holding midfielder, yet still – in Souness’s eyes – a player stuck between roles. Midfield general, or centre-half in disguise?
