It's going to be a "horses for courses" and load-balancing situation with Partey. His progressive and accurate passing ability in the final third plus his press resistance still gives him the edge as over Rice as the deepest sitting midfielder in our team. Too many games this season to be trying to phase out a player of his quality, despite the obvious dropoff in physical attributes.
Edit: Basically Merino makes us more robust and gives us additional insurance against the inevitable Partey injury. Like has been noted a few times, MM23's primary advantage is that he raises our floor, not necessarily our ceiling. Arteta consistently states that he wants a team which, on its worst days, still manages to be better than the opponent on their best days. We joke about the 114 points thing, but that is the stretch goal for this team in his mind I'm sure.
