LONDON – This was the day Arsenal bought Eberechi Eze for. This exact one. The boyhood Gooner plucked at the death from making the Tottenham switch that was the right move for his career and the wrong one for his heart. Let it all work out, they said. Think it might have, you know.
With the first hat trick the north London derby has seen for 47 years, Eze etched himself into the folklore of a club who were ready to dispense with his services as a 13-year-old. Come May, his brilliant treble may come to look like the day when Arsenal proved themselves to be champions. With this triumph, they have pushed six points clear at the top of the Premier League, their dominance of north London asserted to be as absolute as it has been since the days of the Invincibles.
Make no mistake, Eze knew what this game could mean for him. “Things happen for a reason,” said Mikel Arteta. “He wanted to improve, and he wanted to do extra practice and he was asking me questions about this and that.
The narrative, the vibes, they matter. Of course they do. All the more so for Eze, who had prayed for a day like this.
Park all the emotions for a moment, though. That might seem ludicrous for a north London derby but given Tottenham played with no sense of occasion, perhaps we can assess this like the game against lower mid-table chuggers it felt like. In those circumstances, Arsenal have really needed a player like Eze.
It could have changed but for Eze’s quick feet when the ball broke to him on the edge of the box. There was a will to force the shot here. “It doesn’t have to be perfect,” said Arteta of his marksman. “He has such a quality and capacity to finish actions in different ways that we need to play him very close to the box.”
Despite having started only one of their first five league games, Eze leads Arsenal for shots, averaging over 3.5 per 90 minutes, again good for a top-three berth in the division. These are not generally high-value efforts but that is hardly a problem.
What isn’t is already being three goals to the good in the derby. This time the wobble didn’t come. On Sunday, their territorial advantage had translated into enough wiggle room. Would that have been the case if Eze were not on the pitch? It is impossible to know.
