{"id":387883,"date":"2026-01-04T16:04:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T16:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/387883\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T16:04:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T16:04:07","slug":"rice-double-downs-bournemouth-to-put-arsenal-6-points-clear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/387883\/","title":{"rendered":"Rice double downs Bournemouth to put Arsenal 6 points clear"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Declan Rice proved why he\u2019s a leading candidate to be the Premier League\u2019s player of the season by inspiring Arsenal to a come-from behind victory at Bournemouth that opened up a six-point lead on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The England midfielder scored two second-half goals &#8212; with almost identical low, side-footed finishes &#8212; in a 3-2 win on the south coast.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Rice was a doubt for the match because of a knee injury that forced him out of the 4-1 win over Aston Villa on Tuesday. He was fit enough to return and was the difference between the teams.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Arsenal fell behind in the 10th minute when Evanilson stroked into an unguarded net after intercepting a woeful pass out from the back by Gabriel Magalh\u00e3es.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The Brazil centere-back made amends by lashing in the equaliser six minutes later following a mazy run by Noni Madueke for a second goal in as many starts since returning from six weeks out injured.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">After Rice\u2019s double, a long-range strike by Bournemouth substitute Eli Junior Kroupi in the 76th minute made for a tense finale but Arsenal held on to record a fifth straight win, keeping Villa and Manchester City at arm\u2019s length in the title race.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Villa are the closest challengers to Arsenal after a 3-1 win over Nottingham Forest.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">City can return to second place, four points behind Arsenal, by beating Chelsea on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Declan Rice proved why he\u2019s a leading candidate to be the Premier League\u2019s player of the season by&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387884,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-387883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}