‘Made up his mind’: Journalist says it may be ‘too late’ to stop ‘world class’ player joining Arsenal

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It may be too late to stop Declan Rice from joining Arsenal.

That is according to John Cross who was speaking on Sky Sports’ Back Pages Podcast about the English midfielder.

The ‘world class’ player has been strongly linked with Arsenal for months at this point, and while two bids have been rejected on that front so far, Cross is of the opinion that Rice is already dead set on a move to Arsenal.

Indeed, Cross says that Rice’s mind may be made up and it could be too late for Manchester City or any other club to come in and hijack this deal.

Too late

Cross gave his verdict on the midfielder.

“I think Arsenal and West Ham are just going through a process now and it’s being played out very publicly, previously it would have been a bit quieter. Other clubs would be interested in Rice. Man City have been the rumours in the past few days, but they are signing Matteo Kovacic. I do think Rice’s preferred option or what he has set in his head is Arsenal and I do think he’s almost made up his mind. So I wonder whether other clubs are leaving it too late and Arsenal will just thrash out this business,” Cross said.

Moved quickly

This just goes to show how important it is to set your stall out early.

We’ve all known since January that Declan Rice was the one player Arsenal wanted more than anyone else this summer, and the player has seemingly really appreciated that level of longstanding interest.

Rice has been wooed by Arsenal, and while the treble-winning champions of Europe may want to sign him, it looks as though the Gunners have already done enough to get this deal done.