How far off is Declan Rice's passing from Thomas Partey?
A deep dive into the passing numbers and style between the two players
In the last CannonStats mailbag, there was a question about Declan Rice’s role for Arsenal and how it has changed from his time at West Ham, and why he wasn’t currently being used as a “6” with Arsenal right now.
It was a good question and it was nice to take a quick look at how that changed but one part of my answer has lead to further discussion.
We will find out more the answer to [who is first choice DM] as the season goes on and the rest of the midfield gets healthy but I think the answer is that because Arsenal have had injuries to the other options further up the field and because Rice is a very good player, he is capable of playing in those spots…
When Mikel Merino and Martin Odegaard are healthy, and available Rice will return to playing deeper in the games where all three of them play together and this is the first choice three midfielders but with options for rotation.
My assumption that Rice and Merino are the first choice along with Martin Odegaard got some push back where not everyone shares this opinion. This is the consensus among people who follow me according to the poll that I did but there is a healthy minority that still see Thomas Partey as the first choice in that role.
It is certainly possible that these people are correct and that I am wrong; with Mikel Arteta continuing to pick Thomas Partey as the starting DM when he his fit enough to play.
At this stage of the season, due to injuries to Merino and then Odegaard we have yet to see Arsenal with these players available for a game to have the option to be picked. We still must wait a few weeks to have that opportunity with Odegaard working his way back to full fitness.
One of the main things that proponents of Partey as DM have made is that while he may not have the legs that he used to have, he still is a superior passer and can do things on the ball that Rice doesn’t right now.
It's intriguing to consider whether the claim on his passing superiority is supported by the video and statistics, so let’s go through what we have for the players.
Partey vs Rice - Passing Metrics:
As a first step, I have adapted my radar and distribution charts and focused them rather than on the overall metrics for passing, instead looking at just ones that are focused on passing.
To start I took the performances from 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons for both players. Partey has not played as much during this time, but I would be reluctant to go further back because I think that he has been going through decline with age and injuries knocking him down from his prime production. There is a good argument that this might be his level now and the player that we saw previously is no longer here.
What this shows is that on basically every metric, Rice has performed better and, in the ones where he doesn’t have an advantage the difference between the two players is marginal.
Going back to what would have been Partey’s peak seasons and instead using that as a comparison instead still has Rice looking solid.
Partey is a bit better in a few metrics here now and the overall gap between the two players has shrunk significantly. For making the point that Partey is a better overall passer, this would suggest that at least statistically that isn’t a clear win for Partey.
To make my worry on the decline in the production with the passing from Partey a little clearer, here is his peak seasons with Arsenal compared to what he has done recently.
Digging into things a bit more granularly, again I think shows that the gap between the players is not exceptionally large, in both style and production.
The stats below will be 2023-24 season only, because right now I have the detailed charts restricted to a single season. Refactoring that will be a future goal, but I think it will still help answer some of the more detailed questions that happen after just looking at just the aggregated data.
First let’s look at the standard dashboard for the two players.
Overall, these dashboards look remarkably similar. Similar volume, producing similar value (Partey doing a bit more passing last season), from have similar efficiency, and similar average difficulty of the passes attempted.
The biggest difference here, is that it looks like the average distance for Partey was longer and had a bigger skew towards the right-hand side, especially going forward right. Rice has more of his passes go forward as a percentage, but he was more even going left and right with them.
Looking at things with a little more granularity now with the all the passes from last season shown and compared to other midfielders over the years.
Rice in this graphic is more evenly distributed for the passing start and end locations between the left and right for his actions than Partey but ends up producing comparable production.
This trend continues looking at a larger group of metrics as well.
Now let’s dig into things even more granularly looking at the different types of passes.
Partey when doing his passes into the final third favors the wide right channel.
It does look like a similar overall heat map for start locations to Rice (down below) for these types of passes but with Partey more reluctant to play the ball out to the left or central from those locations, favoring his patented diagonal out to the right either to Saka or White.
It is a similar story for his progressive passes, he likes to receive the ball in the central or right half-space and first looks to play the ball out into the space for a wide runner.
This isn’t to suggest that he can’t or doesn’t do it, it just is not the most common move for him. Here is a clip where he does play the ball out to the left instead of the right from this position.
Here is another one where he is passing centrally through the lines.
I do think that this type of play is the more prototypical Partey pass. Receiving in the middle and turning and playing a medium diagonal out the right to progress the play.
Switching to look at Rice, the story of more balance comes through again.
He still has a shading of his passes out to the right hand side but he is much more willing to have his passes go out to the left-hand side as well. Here is something that in my mind, is a more prototypical Declan Rice play.
He starts playing as the DM, from the right-hand side here in the 4-4-2 shape. He reads the play well recovering the ball and trusting his left foot pass to quickly set Arsenal away up the field.
Here is another clip that I think shows a bit of the difference with him vs Partey. He drops into the backline for buildup and plays a ball through the lines centrally breaking the initial press from Aston Villa last season.
Some of this will be that his starting locations are more balanced, having played both as a 6 and an 8 for Arsenal, but even with this he has more passes from right to left/central than Partey.
Under Pressure
One of the areas that is often also brought up as a detriment to Rice, is that his ability on the half turn, and under pressure is not quite at the level. Thankfully Wyscout has a filter for under pressure passing actions to check this out in more detail.
Here is against Liverpool in the FA Cup, recovering the ball and driving at the marker making him to commit and releasing at the last second for Arsenal to beat the press and move up the field.
Here is another action, this time receiving on the half turn and doing a similar action where gets the ball up the field effectively.
Here he is against Aston Villa under pressure twice. The first time he is just keeping the ball, the second time he plays the ball around the corner progressing the ball. Both of these are on the half turn and one touch passes.
Here he is away to Brentford, he is on the half turn receiving under pressure and plays a first time pass with his weak foot to find a teammate up the field.
For comparison I pulled the full playlist of the under-pressure actions for both Partey and Rice this season to get an idea of what they have done in those opportunities.
There is a nice mix of skills here, where Partey is able to hold on to possession but overall in this mix it doesn’t show him doing that much of the receive and progress type actions that he is often credited with in these debates. Perhaps this is an artifact of the tagging where those actions didn’t go down as under pressure actions.
Rice so far this season’s doesn’t have as many actions tagged here but here is what his look like.
To compensate for the lack of clips I also pulled the first 9 matches from last season.
We get a lot more clips here and it shows a nice cross section of what Rice can do and sometimes struggles with.
There are some mistakes in here for sure, but it also shows him doing solid work to keep possession, and even advance the ball up the field in these tough situations. He has solid positioning on the half turn and shows a lot of composure to play the ball first time.
Final Thoughts
One of my big take aways from this exercise is that I pretty strongly believe that Rice is an underrated passer. He has a reputation as a more defensive type of player, with a big engine for covering space and carrying the ball that obscures the fact that he can be particularly good on the ball as a passer as well.
Last season, he had a multitude of roles, ranging from a solitary defensive midfielder distributing from deep, to one half of a double pivot with an inverting fullback, to an advanced midfielder operating in the final third.
He excelled at these roles and showed versatility that I did not expect when he joined from West Ham. This has continued this season, where due to a bit of a transfer saga, Mikel Merino didn’t join the club until late August and then suffered an injury that kept him out, Rice has been called upon to continue to operate further up the field.
Partey by contrast, came in with his reputation more built upon his passing, where previously some of the work that he did off the ball became underrated for how much it added to Arsenal. His passing has always been appreciated and to a certain extent his reputation potentially covers up that his production has dropped from his previous level.
Rice and Partey will come to playing the DM role at Arsenal in a different way to each other, but should be able to still come to a very similar level of production.
One of the follow ups for this topic is always, “Well who will replace Partey?” and I think the obvious answer is that Arsenal have already done that with Declan Rice. Looking at the players that are most similar to Partey at his peak, one of the players that is right there is Declan Rice last season.
I remain confident that while Rice will play in a different way than Partey, he is not a massive drop off in possession from playing Thomas Partey in the role. Given his age and other skills, he adds the potential to be better than Partey at his current state.
There will be a need for Partey this season and he has already been valuable to the team as they navigated this tough early run of fixtures with injuries, but his future points to a smaller role with Rice taking his spot.
Really interesting piece and as always it’s hard to argue against the statistics and data. However, this just doesn’t pass the eye test in my mind.
Is Rice the equal of a fading Thomas, yes of course and his cross field switch passing which Mikel is using absent Ødegaard is quite magnificent.
However, I find Declan a frustrating deep line playmaker watch. This isn’t aesthetic bias, I really don’t care about what a player looks like.
But it’s clear for all to see, that his ability to take the ball on turn off both feet is nowhere near say a Rodri. That’s a high bar, but that’s the level Mikel is trying to surpass.
I really worry about his ability to launch attacks and control tempo, albeit that is largely shouldered by Ødegaard when fit.
I’m still not convinced he is a world class 6, he is a world class DM, but it depends on whether Mikel is shaping the team around a 6’s ability to launch attacks, although Saliba also does this well.
I’d take an in form fit Thomas over Declan at 6 any day of the week, but I caveat that by saying it depends on how Mikel is setting the team up.
I am a bit confused by the framing here as "how much of a dropoff is Rice" when statistically the framing that would make more sense is "how much better is Rice." You show he is better in basically every metric over past two years and the peak Partey is, at best numerically for Partey, a wash. I also think it is pretty clearly an advantage to be able to pass both sides and that Partey's strong preference for a specific pass is an obvious weakness as teams can game plan for that. Am I missing something? Why is the conversation here about Rice's relative drop-off instead of his relative benefit?
Really enjoyed the article and deep dive! I definitely was surprised by the numbers, but now think the narrative of Partey passing being missed with Rice, even if we are talking about Peak Partey before he entered his 30s, is seemingly very misleading.