Arsenal walked out of Liverpool with their first league win at the ground since 2012, and the man they owed it to most was Rice. The England midfielder overlapped Noni Madueke down the right in the 16th minute and clipped in the low cross that Kai Havertz tapped home at the back post, as the Anfield side’s own match report confirmed.
Jamie Carragher watched it all from the Sky Sports studio, and he came back after the whistle with a verdict he was in no mood to soften.
“He’s the best midfield player in the Premier League by a long way. It’s not even a debate,” Carragher said on Sky Sports.
Caicedo comparison “not even close”
The argument Carragher wanted to settle was last season’s. Chelsea’s Moises Caicedo had spent much of 2025-26 running neck and neck with Rice in the pundit chatter over the Premier League’s top engine-room operator. Not any more, as far as the former Liverpool defender is concerned, he described the comparison with Caicedo as “not even close” and placed Rice inside Arsenal’s own history, ranking him alongside Patrick Vieira and Liam Brady, per Yahoo Sports.
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A 14-year wait ends at Anfield
The praise landed on the back of a result Arsenal supporters had been waiting more than a decade for. Their last league win at the ground came in 2012, when Mikel Arteta himself was patrolling their midfield as a player.
Arteta kept his reaction tight afterward.
“I’m extremely proud of them. It’s been 14 years, that’s a long time. I’m sure we made everybody attached to the club extremely proud,” he told reporters, per Yahoo Sports.
The defensive display was the other story. Liverpool took 17 shots and failed to force a single save from David Raya. Florian Wirtz struck the crossbar from a free kick; otherwise Arsenal’s back line held firm without the suspended William Saliba.
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Arsenal now sit on 24 points from nine matches, three points clear at the top of the Premier League, with a ninth clean sheet already banked. Liverpool drop to fifth.
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