Rice on his red card and team spirit | Interview | News

Declan Rice apologized to his teammates and the supporters after picking up the first red card of his career on Saturday.

Our midfielder was dismissed for a second bookable offense at the start of the second half, for an apparent time-wasting infringement when he nudged the ball away after Brighton won a free-kick.

It was Rice’s 245th Premier League appearance, and his first ever red card, and afterwards he spoke to us about the decision and the game as a whole. Here’s the full transcript…

On the game…

When we went 1-0 up we had a good bit of momentum in the game, especially the first 15 minutes. To go 1-0 was obviously really good, and we wanted to build on that in the second half. Obviously a decision changed the flow of the game. It was tough, but the lads did amazingly well in the second half to dig it out, to fight with our fans and in the end that’s a really good point against a team that are in really good form at the minute.

On the decision…

I was shocked, I thought you could see in my face I was shocked. He’s obviously gone over… I’ve not sprinted back in front of him and smashed the ball away. I’ve touched the ball with the outside of my foot. But look, this is the laws of the game. If you touch ball away, even a little bit, obviously it’s a red card after my challenge in the first half which I fully accept was a 50-50 that I didn’t win. But the second half one, especially with it being in the corner flag, they can’t really progress anywhere from there. It was tough, it was harsh, but it’s one of those things. I have to move on from it, I will be better for it and I can only praise the players for digging deep for me, and the manager for pushing everyone, and the fans as well who were unbelievable again this afternoon. That’s how I see it.

On the reaction and late chances…

Yeah I was obviously watching the game from inside, I was up off my seat when those big two chances came. Obviously David as well who made another big save for us. Those two big chances, on another day maybe they go in, but to even generate those chances, from where we were, on the edge of out box to then be at the other end of the pitch, shows the desire of the boys. 1-1 in the end is not ideal because we want to win every game, that’s what we strive for and believe we can do. Take the context out of it, we had 10 men for 50 minutes, in the end I think it’s a really strong point. We will keep fighting and battling, it’s only been three weeks since the start of the season, and we’re going to keep going in the right direction for sure.

On moving forward…

I think from my behalf, that’s my first sending off in my career, so I just wanted to apologize obviously to my teammates, which I’ve done, and to the fans. When you get sent off, it’s never nice, you get a sense of guilt over you, and I was lucky today that my teammates really helped me out and we didn’t lose the game. I’ll learn from it, I really appreciate the fans’ support as always – it’s not in my nature really to get red cards, so I’ll learn from it, I’ll see where I can be better, and I’ll be back for sure. I’m sure this group of players, me and everyone else, we’re only going to strive towards one thing and that’s to be successful. We’ll keep going, I know it’s tough, it’s tough for me as well but we’ll be back stronger, and we know we’ve got a tough set of fixtures when we are back from the internationals, we’ll be ready . Stick behind us, your incredible support is what we need.