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“For ever grateful, man, that’s how I feel – that will be me for life,” reflected Eberechi Eze on his time at Crystal Palace during an interview with Ian Wright when he signed for Arsenal. Wright, another south Londoner who made the move, coincidentally at the same age – 27 – in September 1991, seemed the perfect person with whom to share what Eze described as “the realisation of a prayer we started 20 years ago as a family”. Yet for a small minority of Palace supporters with very long memories it rekindled bitter feelings about an incident that occurred at Highbury in May 1993.
Wright had not held back after scoring Arsenal’s winner on his first appearance against Steve Coppell’s side at Selhurst Park a few months earlier – “I celebrated because Palace fans were being nasty,” he later explained – and further soured the relationship by kissing the badge when he gave his team the lead in a match his old side desperately needed to win to avoid relegation. “After I scored I remember Nigel Martyn saying: ‘Wrighty, what are you doing? You’re going to send us down,’” he recalled.
In 2006, a 42-year-old and long-retired Wright, who had recently been voted as Palace’s player of the century, helped to bury the hatchet with those who bore a grudge by kissing the Palace badge after scoring in a charity match organised for his former teammate Geoff Thomas. “We had our problems for a while but I think we’ve worked them out now,” he said, even if some continue to disagree.
For Eze, who on Sunday faces Palace for the first time since his £67.5m move, there are no such issues. As the player who scored the goal that secured Palace’s first major trophy in the FA Cup final in May, he will always have a special place in the club’s history. That was part of an extraordinary run Wright would have been proud of, Eze scoring six goals in his final eight Premier League games and three in the FA Cup after netting his first England goal against Latvia in March.
Such scintillating form played a key role in persuading Arsenal to gazump Tottenham for the signature of the player they rejected as a teenager, although Eze has yet to score for them in the league despite going into this weekend having taken the joint-most shots (18, equal with Nottingham Forest’s Morgan Gibbs-White) without finding the net. That includes an appearance for Palace against Chelsea on the opening day when his free-kick was controversially disallowed after Marc Guéhi was adjudged to have been less than one metre from the wall as the shot was taken.
A solitary strike against Port Vale in the Carabao Cup is a disappointing return from 10 appearances for Arsenal, including seven starts. It is perhaps partially explained by the fact that Eze has largely been used in a No 10 role that he last filled at Queens Park Rangers rather than in a withdrawn role on the left of the attack, where he was deployed by Oliver Glasner at Palace and which often meant he was able to get on the end of Daniel Muñoz’s crosses, as in the final against Manchester City at Wembley.
“As long as I’m on the pitch and I’m given the opportunity to play and express myself in that environment then it doesn’t matter where I play,” Eze said in his interview with Wright. “Of course [the manager] has ideas and things he wants. But for me, I’m free, man.”
Mikel Arteta’s response to criticism that he played with the handbrake on in Arsenal’s 1-1 draw with City last month, when Eze came off the bench to set up Gabriel Martinelli’s equaliser, has been to entrust Eze with replacing the injured captain, Martin Ødegaard, as the creative hub. It has coincided with six straight victories. Another Eze goal against Latvia this month and his impressive performance against Atlético Madrid in midweek have offered promising signs that the goals will soon start to flow for him at Arsenal.
But if his Palace statistics are anything to go by, that is more likely to happen in the new year. Eze has scored nine goals in 68 Premier League games before 31 December at a ratio of 0.13 compared with 25 in 85 (0.34) after. At the start of last season, he scored against Chelsea in August after having another free-kick chalked off contentiously in the opening game against Brentford and had to wait until 29 December for his second.
Whereas Guéhi was denied his move to Liverpool at the last minute this summer, Glasner is understood not to have opposed Eze’s departure because he felt it gave Palace an opportunity to reinvest the club record fee. Palace have the highest expected goals of any Premier League club, Yéremy Pino having slotted straight into Eze’s role since arriving from Villarreal, although the Spain international has yet to score or register an assist in the league despite some promising performances. Christantus Uche, who arrived on deadline day on an initial loan from the Spanish side Getafe and must start 10 matches for Palace to trigger a £17m permanent move, was left out of the squad to face Bournemouth after arriving late back from international duty with Nigeria last week and has played only 57 minutes.
A swift reunion with players with whom Eze made history for Palace in May will make Sunday an emotional occasion for him. He told Wright, who had to wait until he was 34 to win the title in his final season at Arsenal, that the FA Cup victory had given him the taste for trophies.
“I’ve seen what you can do, not just for your teammates or the staff,” he said. “But I can see what you can do to people when you win and you bring that kind of joy to a place. That’s my aim.”
Just don’t expect him to celebrate if he scores against Palace.
