Declan Rice leads the Premier League in assists from open play, a stat that strips out set pieces and points to something clubs already suspected: Arsenal’s defensive midfielder has become one of the league’s most productive creators when the ball is live. Rice has five assists this season, all generated from open play, and he has already matched his total assists from the 2025-26 campaign with weeks of the season still unplayed.
The latest came in Arsenal’s 1-0 win over Liverpool at Anfield, where Rice set up Kai Havertz for the only goal. The result marked Arsenal’s first win at Anfield in 14 years, dating back to 2012.
Rice’s Open-Play Numbers Lead The League
No other Premier League player has more open-play assists than Rice’s five. Pascal Gross and Evanilson sit second with four apiece. A group of seven players, including Maxim de Cuyper, Joao Pedro, Johan Manzambi, Mohammed Kudus, Daichi Kamada, Cody Gakpo and Josko Gvardiol, are tied on three.
What separates Rice from that list is role. He is not a winger or a No. 10 whose job description starts with chance creation. He operates as a holding midfielder for Arsenal, a position traditionally measured by tackles and interceptions rather than assist charts. Topping a league-wide open-play assist list from that spot is a different kind of production than a forward doing the same.
A Workload That Matches The Output
The Liverpool match offered a clear picture of how involved Rice is in Arsenal’s buildup. He recorded 62 touches against Liverpool, the most of any Arsenal player on the pitch. That workload, combined with the assist for Havertz, shows Rice was central to both halves of Arsenal’s performance at Anfield, not just a passenger benefiting from others’ work.
Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher praised the performance directly, calling Rice “world class” and “the best midfield player in the Premier League by a long way.” Carragher added: “He’s one of the best midfield players Arsenal have ever had. They’ve obviously had some great ones.
He’s right up there with the best of them. He’s the best midfield player in the Premier League by a long way. It’s not even a debate.”
That assessment, from a former Liverpool defender watching his own team lose, carries weight on a day Arsenal’s away record at Anfield finally turned.
The Counterpoint: Arsenal’s Set-Piece Drop-Off
Rice’s open-play assist lead stands out partly because Arsenal’s broader attacking approach has shifted. The club scored 25 goals from set pieces during their title-winning 2025-26 season, a figure that made dead-ball situations a defining part of their identity. This season has looked different. Ezri Konsa’s goal against Everton was Arsenal’s first set-piece goal of the league campaign, a notable gap for a team that built a title around exactly that strength.
Mikel Arteta addressed the dip directly, saying: “You have to see them when we train the level of attention and how much they believe in what we do and what Nico [Jover, set-piece coach] does as well. There’s no question about that, but at the end he has to come through and he has to make the difference and we know that that is a massive welcome for us. We hadn’t scored from a set-piece, which we were disappointed with because we had generated so many chances as well.
We know that in every phase of play we want to be the best and we’re not going to stop until we do it.” Arteta’s comments make clear the set-piece decline is a known issue inside the building, not an overlooked trend. It also means Rice’s open-play production has had to carry more creative weight while that part of Arsenal’s game catches up.
Why It Fits Arsenal’s Season So Far
Arsenal are nine games into their title defense and remain unbeaten in the league. Under Arteta, the club has won 81% of league matches in which it has opened the scoring, a number that makes early goals like Havertz’s at Anfield disproportionately valuable. Rice’s assist did not just decide a single match: it fed into a pattern that has defined Arsenal’s results all season.
That context matters when judging the value of his five open-play assists. They have not come in isolation or in games already shaped by other factors. Several have arrived in tight, low-scoring matches where the first goal carried outsized importance for Arsenal’s eventual result.
What To Watch Next
Rice’s assist tally will be worth tracking against Gross and Evanilson as the season continues, particularly since all five of his assists have come without any set-piece help. Arsenal’s set-piece numbers are also one to monitor, given how central that source of goals was to their 2025-26 title and how quiet it has been so far in 2026-27. Both threads intersect with Rice, who has become as important to Arsenal’s buildup play as he is to the defensive side of his game, something already covered in reporting on Arsenal’s injury situation with Bukayo Saka and the club’s broader squad depth questions following the incident involving Santos before the Lille match.
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