It depends on how you view it. Rice himself? Probably a £50m player, tops; however if you brought Rice in, you free up Pogba and Bruno to play in their more natural positions either in 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3. That's two potentially £80m-£100m players being able to play their natural games without worrying about progressing the ball from the first, to second and third phases of play and instead they can focus on what they are great at: inflicting damage on the opposition.
On that front, would you pay the potentially £80m it would take to get Rice, or instead look elsewhere? For me, I'd pay it because over the last 9 months or so he's gotten better and better, and he's showing a remarkably complete skillset. Bundles of energy and pace, good passing, very good positional discipline and play, and he's shown he has the ability to bomb on when required. The more I see of him, the more I see a young Matic at Chelsea, and I think that type of player is who we are currently missing.
Now, you could get someone on the continent whose cheaper and maybe he'd be a better option, but being able to play at the pace that is the standard in the PL is a massive thing and we've seen in the big money buys of last year that even some of the very best of their ilk in Europe have struggled to adapt in their first year (I'm looking at you, Thiago and Partey). We are much less likely to worry about this adaptation if Rice came in. He can come in and he could arguably play his natural game with any one or two of our current midfield options and elevate our standard of play in that second phase.
And I say all this as someone who up until late last year really didn't rate Rice at all and thought of him as nothing more than a Eric Dier mk.II. He's so much more than that and I think he has it within himself to get even better and show more sides to his game, kind of like Carrick at Spurs (though obviously very different players) who like Rice was primarily seen as a passer and not much else, but you saw little bits and pieces that suggested that with a little time he had more strings to his bow that he was on the verge of showing.
