When Eberechi Eze joined Arsenal in the summer it looked like a perfect fit – the former Crystal Palace playmaker had returned to his boyhood club, who in turn had signed just the kind of X-factor maverick that their attack was lacking.
Fast forward six months later and Eze’s Arsenal dream is turning into a nightmare. The England international hasn’t been starting a lot of games, and when he was finally named in Mikel Arteta’s first XI against Brentford last night, he lasted just 45 minutes before being hooked at half time.
Eze’s stats in that first half against Brentford were abysmal – 0 shots, 0 dribbles, and 0 key passes – a far cry from the entertainer we saw at Palace for so many years.
We have seen one moment of genuine magic from Eze as he scored a famous hat-trick in the North London Derby win over Tottenham back in November, but he has zero goals and just one assist in the 16 games since then.
Eberechi Eze’s Arsenal return has turned sour
It wasn’t meant to be like this, with Eze’s return to Arsenal after failing to make it in their academy as a youngster looking like turning into one of football’s great fairytales.
“I thought about coming back from the moment I understood other clubs and what it meant to become a pro. I’ve always thought: ‘Arsenal is where it’s at, that’s what I want to achieve, what I want to get to’,” Eze told Ian Wright in an interview with Arsenal’s official site shortly after joining.
The 27-year-old was full of emotion as he was greeted by the Emirates Stadium crowd on the day his signing was announced. It looked like a perfect fit, so why has it gone so badly wrong?
Explaining his decision to sub Eze at half time yesterday, Arteta was quoted by the Independent as saying: “I think we needed another kind of profile to generate many more problems for them around those areas.”
Discussing Eze’s struggles more generally, the Spanish tactician added: “It’s not easy when you move to a new club, it’s always like this and when you play against a team that is like this. The ball is a lot of times not on the floor and you have to be constantly breaking the play and do that, especially for attacking and creative players, it’s more difficult.”
Eberechi Eze = the new Jack Grealish?
Eze’s story at Arsenal feels worryingly similar to that of Jack Grealish at Manchester City – both have gone from being a big fish in a small pond to just another cog in a well-oiled machine.
Just like Grealish at Aston Villa, Eze got used to enjoying more or less a free role in a team that were not expected to win every game, and who were not facing frustrating low blocks in every game.
On top of that, it’s worth noting that Eze has had to get used to a far more intense schedule at Arsenal than he ever had at Palace, but at this point it’s hard to ignore that the main problem looks like the fact that he’s a poor stylistic fit rather than just fatigued.
The demands at Arsenal, the game states they often find themselves in, are just completely different from what Eze got used to at Palace. The question now is, can he adapt, or will he leave and go down as one of the club’s biggest flops of recent history?
“Let it all work out” was the song Eze was greeted with when he joined Arsenal. If only football were that simple.