Declan Rice has already revealed Arsenal pre-season plan as Edu finalises £105m West Ham swoop

Declan Rice may have already hinted at his plans for pre-season as talks continue between Arsenal and West Ham over a transfer for the England international.

The 24-year-old is Mikel Arteta’s priority target this summer, football.london understands, and it’s believed a £105million fee has been agreed between the two clubs. The Gunners’ sporting director Edu Gaspar is locked in talks with the Hammers and it’s thought the structure of the deal is the only remaining stumbling block.

With members of Arsenal’s first team squad expected to report back to the club’s training base at London Colney for the start of pre-season from Monday, it may not be too long until Rice joins them.

Last playing for England on June 19 in the 7-0 win against North Macedonia, Rice has since been enjoying some time off and has recently been pictured in Dubai alongside fitness coach Chris Bowman, who posted a snap of the two together on Instagram. With pre-season just around the corner it appears that the Hammers captain is firmly focusing on his fitness, which will please Gunners supporters and Arteta.

The fact Rice is doing work in the off season should be no surprise, though, judging by his comments in June 2022. Speaking on the Tubes & Ange Golf Life YouTube channel, the England international revealed his thoughts on pre-season training and perhaps gave an insight into what he has been doing ahead of completing a move to Arsenal.

“You have time off but you work,” he said last summer. “You have your rest but then there is a time where you think… even me I’ve got three weeks off. I took the first week and a half off and then I started to train again. Started to build it back up.

“If I didn’t do that, if I would have gone back I’d have been in a bad shape. It’s in your mind, 100 per cent.

“Because of the level of the Premier League. You need to keep improving. You can’t have three weeks off straight eating what you want, drinking what you want because when you come back it’s going to hit you like a tonne of bricks.”

The midfielder also spoke about the importance of pre-season training with the rest of the squad. “You do running on your own, say you finish West Ham, go away and do your runs. It gets you in a good place but there’s nothing like actually playing football. Football fitness and running fitness are two different things,” Rice said.

“I can’t explain it. Doing a possession drill is 10 times harder than doing a run because you’re constantly on your quads, you’re moving around. That’s what you need. It’s short, sharp [and] game related stuff.

“So when you actually get back to football it’s actually tougher than the actual running they probably give you.”

He added: “You need to be in a good place. I feel like, like you said, the level of players you are playing against, if you don’t have that upper edge you’ll get found out quick. And you feel it on the pitch [if] someone runs past you.”

With Rice pictured in Dubai working on his fitness, it shows that the midfielder perhaps already has one eye on the Premier League 2023/24 season, which looks like he will spend at Arsenal. The fact he is keeping his fitness levels up will no doubt impress Arteta ahead of what is expected to be a busy few weeks.

The Gunners are due to fly out to Germany for a summer training camp at the Adidas HQ at some point in early July, with the first pre-season friendly against Nurnberg taking place on July 13. A pre-season tour of America follows with games against MLS All-Stars, Manchester United and Barcelona scheduled between July 20 and July 26.

The Emirates Cup then returns with Arsenal taking on AS Monaco at Emirates Stadium on August 2 before the first competitive match of the 2023/24 season gets underway with Arteta’s side facing Manchester City in the Community Shield on August 6.