Declan Rice Joins Milestone Arsenal Club in North London Derby

The relentlessly energetic central midfielder has plenty of admirers around the world.

Declan Rice is the heartbeat of Arsenal’s midfield. | Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC/Getty Images

Declan Rice is rightly regarded as one of the best central midfielders in the world—so it’s perhaps no surprise that he’s racked up 100 Premier League appearances for Arsenal in the blink of an eye.

Rice is the 73rd player since the Premier League’s inception in 1992 to register this particular milestone for Arsenal and the eighth active player to reach his ton. What will matter more to Rice is silverware at the end of the season—the Gunners are seeking to end a 22-year title drought that has yielded three successive runners-up finishes—but it’s another feather in the cap for a player many supporters feel should be club captain.

Instead, Martin Ødegaard holds that particular title, though Rice is part of a leadership group that also includes Bukayo Saka, who signed a new five-year contract earlier in the week to commit his long-term future to the club.

Rice previously made 204 appearances for West Ham United in the Premier League, spanning a seven-season stretch that saw him break into the first team as a fresh-faced teenager. Now, at 27, the relentless box-to-box midfielder has stepped foot onto a Premier League field over 300 times.

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The Esteemed Company Rice Joins

Ray Parlour was dubbed the “Romford Pelé.” | Mark Leech/Offside/Getty Images

The current crop of Arsenal players to have played in red and white more than 100 times includes Saka—he leads the way with 219 appearances since first appearing on New Year’s Day in 2019—the two Gabriels—Martinelli and Magalhães, who both have 182 showings to their name—and Ødegaard, who is up to 171 but would have had plenty more were it not for recent injury troubles.

Ben White, William Saliba and Leandro Trossard are the three other players continually backed by Arteta to perform, though White’s appearances are becoming more and more sporadic as Jurriën Timber has usurped him in the right-back pecking order.

Arsenal’s most experienced Premier League player is former midfielder Ray Parlour. The Cobra Bomb colossus turned out 333 times between 1992 and 2004—eight more than David Seaman managed in goal (325) and 18 ahead of genius forward Dennis Bergkamp, who places highly in Sports Illustrated’s top 50 Premier League players of all time.

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Arsenal’s Highest Premier League Appearance Makers

Player	Appearances
Ray Parlour	333
David Seaman	325
Dennis Bergkamp	315
Martin Keown	310
Lee Dixon	305
Patrick Vieira	279
Nigel Winterburn	270
Theo Walcott	270
Aaron Ramsey	262
Thierry Henry	258

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Rice’s Warning to Arsenal Over Premier League Title

Declan Rice believes Arsenal have the quality. | Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC/Getty Images

Winning the Premier League title would remove a huge shadow that continues to cast over north London—though Arsenal have hardly helped themselves in recent weeks with some nervy, uncharacteristically timid performances leading to dropped points at a crucial time.

It’s nothing new for Arsenal, nor Rice after his involvement in the last two Premier League title races, and he insisted before the clash with Spurs that the players have got each other’s backs as they strive to achieve their ambitions.

“We’re on our own journey, we’re on our own path and we fully believe in each other,” he warned this week. “We want to do it because we’ve got such a good core group, such quality players now that we can do it. It shows that we can flick a page in terms of people talking about that mentality.

“One thing that stuck with me after the Manchester United game, the manager talked about looking at the position that we’ve earned for ourselves. We have to enjoy this.

“We need some perspective about where we are, but also we need to look a bit bigger to understand that if we carry on doing what we’re doing in terms of the results, it isn’t going to last.

“It’s on us as players to pick that up because we have it in us to win every game. I genuinely believe with this group, with what we’ve done here before, we could go on the run and easily win games.”

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