The midfielder chose to join the Gunners over City from West Ham last summer for £105 million and says that the opportunity to achieve "big things" with Mikel Arteta's side was more enticing than signing for serial champions City.

Rice told The Athletic: "This project seemed more exciting and that’s why I chose to come to Arsenal, because I believe we’re on to big things here."

The England international has been a key figure during Arsenal's title push this season but admits that he was "out of his depth" when asked to fulfill Arteta's tactical demands in a pre-season match.

He recalled: "My main thing (around adaptation) was in pre-season when I’d obviously just got there and was trying to gain fitness. We played against Man United and I didn’t have the best of games. I wasn’t really that fit. And that was when we really tried to play our game model and you could just see I was way out of depth. I didn’t really understand anything that was going on.

"There were some good moments when I was trying to learn it, but there were also some moments where you could see I needed to improve a lot. After that, I watched a lot of videos and then on the training field tried to really improve. I think that game (against United) was a real catalyst to helping me out."