Declan Rice Named Arsenal’s Player of the Season Again

Declan Rice arrived at Arsenal to change games. Two years on, he is changing the club’s history books as well.

For the second successive season, the midfielder has been voted the club’s men’s Player of the Season, taking 44% of the supporters’ vote after a campaign that dragged the Premier League trophy back to north London for the first time in 22 years and carried Arsenal all the way to a second-ever Champions League final.

David Raya finished second in the poll, Gabriel third. The award, though, belongs emphatically to the man at the heart of Mikel Arteta’s side.

Joining an elite Arsenal club

Back-to-back Player of the Season winners at Arsenal are rare. Rice becomes only the sixth player to manage it, stepping into a line that runs through Liam Brady, Ian Wright and Thierry Henry, and more recently Bukayo Saka and Martin Odegaard.

Those names define eras. Rice is starting to define this one.

His first season as a Gunner in 2023/24 ended with him as runner-up in the same vote. Since then, he has simply taken ownership of the award, claiming it in consecutive years while the team has surged from hopeful challengers to champions.

The engine of a title winner

If Arsenal’s campaign was built on control and intensity, Rice supplied both. He spent the season patrolling in front of the back four or stepping higher to press and probe behind the frontline, switching roles as the demands of the game changed.

The numbers tell the story of that dominance.

No outfielder played more minutes: 4,456 across 55 appearances in all competitions. It means Rice has now gone beyond a half-century of games in each of his three seasons in red and white, an ever-present reference point in a side constantly tweaking and evolving around him.

On the ball, he created more chances than anyone else in the squad – 96 in total – and his delivery at set-pieces became a crucial weapon in the title run-in. He finished with nine assists and five goals, including a brace in a pivotal win over Bournemouth in January that underlined his growing authority in the final third.

Without the ball, he was even more relentless. Rice won possession back 239 times, the highest figure in the squad, and topped the tackling charts as well with 91. When Arsenal needed the ball, he went and took it.

Recognition beyond north London

Such influence was never likely to go unnoticed outside the Emirates.

Rice earned a place in the Champions League Team of the Season and found his name on the shortlists for both the Premier League Player of the Season and the PFA Player of the Season awards, underlining his status as one of the defining footballers of the 2025/26 campaign.

Now he heads into the 2026 World Cup as a central figure in England’s midfield, carrying club form that has already delivered a league title and a European final. The individual accolades are stacking up, the numbers are mounting, and the demands on his shoulders are only growing.

Arsenal’s supporters have made their verdict clear. The question now is how far Declan Rice can push the ceiling of a team – and a club – that suddenly looks built in his image.