Declan Ricehas taken to social media after sustaining an injury scare during Arsenal's 2-0 victory over Brentford on Wednesday evening. The 26-year-old delivered another outstanding display for the Gunners but was forced off in the 83rd minute after seemingly picking up a calf issue.

Rice made way for Viktor Gyokeres in the latter stages, with the Sweden international helping Mikel Arteta's men seal three crucial points in their pursuit of the Premier League title. After the match, Arteta appeared worried when discussing Rice's condition.

"Obviously it's never good news," the Spaniard said. "Declan had to come off. We don't know."

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"We have to see tomorrow what he's got. He can walk. He cannot play. The thing is, he's played a lot of minutes but as well, now we played Wednesday night and we have to play Saturday morning as well."

Rice subsequently posted three Instagram stories after the final whistle. His opening post showed him striding onto the Emirates Stadium pitch with the message: "+3 back to winning ways [red love heart emoji]."

The second clip featured him emerging from the tunnel, whilst his third captured a moment with England colleague and former Brentford striker Ivan Toney. Rice wrote: "Good to see my brother! ! @ivantoney1 [red love heart emoji]."

Goals from Mikel Merino and Bukayo Saka meant the Gunners extended their advantage at the Premier League summit to five points. Arsenal's lead had been cut to just two points following Manchester City's thrilling 5-4 victory at Fulham, but Arteta's team secured their seventh win in nine league games to extend their advantage.

Reflecting on his team's performance against Brentford, Arteta said: "I think we had three big chances to score the second goal. We didn't do it, and then when we were going for the second one, the game became a little bit open.

"We started to be a bit late in certain moments in the high press, they break it and the pitch is stretched. Then we needed to be a bit more compact.

"But I think we went through that period really well when we started to take the ball and do what we had to do with the ball to bring the momentum down, bring the composure and the ball to the areas that we wanted to attract them and to use the open spaces that they left and score a second goal."

Wednesday's match against Brentford was Arsenal's fourth game in 10 days, having faced Tottenham, Bayern Munich and Chelsea within a week. The Gunners now have another couple of days to prepare for a challenging trip to Aston Villa on Saturday lunchtime.

Lamenting the fixture schedule, Arteta added: "It's probably not one thing, but we can help the players and everybody in the league and everybody to do what we have to do, give it another day.

"Especially the teams that are playing so much in Europe. To everybody in general, I think we can do that because we're going to benefit from that. We've never had such a schedule on every level, not only in the Premier League, but every competition internationally as well.

"So we need to try to do that, please. I think it's common sense. I think at some point this becomes too much, you know, and the players are not machines. But we have to try to do that when we can."

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