Rice: “We'll keep pushing and fighting” | Interview | News

Declan Rice spoke about our desire to give a positive response to Saturday’s defeat against Bournemouth with our next match on Tuesday night.

He gave us an honest assessment of the weekend’s 2-0 defeat on the south coast, discussing how going down to 10 men affected our approach to the match.

“I could say a million things,” he said. “But I think I’m proud of the players to be honest. I think the way we reacted again, going down to 10 men was not ideal, we knew that as a group of players, we’ve just said in there [the dressing room], that’s three times in eight games that we’ve let our standards slip and if you want to compete at the top you cannot let that happen.

“But again, the reaction we showed to that and the belief, even on the pitch at half-time, that we could go and win the game and the chances that we had. I’m proud of these boys and I’m proud of the mentality that these boys and the club show.

“We’ll keep pushing, we’ll keep fighting on, I think that’s the most important thing. The fans were amazing. It’s so disappointing because we wanted to stay unbeaten, we wanted to win the game, but this is football and it’s a real rollercoaster, it was never going to be perfect, there’s ups and downs but we need to stick together because there’s another six or seven games coming up this month so plenty of positives to look forward to.”

The game was made more difficult when William Saliba was shown a red card for fouling Evanilson in the 28th minute.

“It affects it massively, if the game stays 11v11 for sure it tends to open up and we go on to win the game because with 10 men we still created some amazing chances,” Declan explained. “They were throwing everything at us and leaving big spaces, but this is football, you can’t wish for it or gamble for it, you need to earn it and in the end, with the two mistakes we made at critical times, it wasn’t enough tonight. That’s the best way to describe it.

“These supporters were full in the stadium even before we came out to warm up, singing our names, chanting and then we go down to 10 men; the support, you feel that, you hear their voices and you want to do so well for them and perform for them because they pay their well-earned money to come and watch us and to travel down here so to not win is disappointing but we thank them and we have two big home games, Shakhtar and Liverpool, so I know they will be behind us for that.”