Declan Rice’s goal against Chelsea set a new Arsenal record in the Premier League, and he’s admitted he was inspired by David Beckham.

It may have been into an empty net, but Declan Rice’s goal against Chelsea was far from straightforward, with the Premier League confirming that it was the longest-range goal scored by an Arsenal player in the competition on record.

Stats companies only started to track that kind of information in 2006/07, so the Premier League records on this only cover the last 17 years. But Arsenal have obviously scored a lot of goals in that time.

Bend it like Declan 🤩 pic.twitter.com/2AHDOpqDS3

— Arsenal (@Arsenal) October 22, 2023

Speaking after the game, Rice explained that he was inspired by David Beckham, having watched the England international’s documentary the previous night.

“Everyone’s been talking about this Beckham documentary, and I watched it for the first time last night,” Rice said.

“The first couple of clips are the game against Wimbledon where he scored from the halfway line and I took a lot of belief from that.

“I was just thinking that it was bizarre that I watched it last night, and then obviously today taking that shot first time and scoring. It was a special goal to kickstart our comeback, you’ve got to keep shooting – if you shoot, you score!

“I’ve just watched it back, it was a great finish so I was happy with that.”

Rice ended up winning Arsenal’s Player of the Match award, having inspired a comeback from 2-0 down to snatch a point in the last 15 minutes of the contest.

Following his goal against Manchester United to give Arsenal the lead in injury time, Saturday’s goal against Chelsea was the summer signing’s second in a big-six match already.