Eberechi Eze has outlined how a late approach from Arsenal changed the course of his summer. Spurs appeared to be leading negotiations in mid-August after James Maddison suffered a serious knee injury and the accepted departure of Son Heung-min led Tottenham to seek a new creative outlet. Talks were held, personal terms had been accepted and Crystal Palace were reportedly content with a \u00a355 million ($73.2 million) fee on the table.<\/p>\n
Speaking during a return to his former secondary school, Eze acknowledged the strength of Tottenham\u2019s position. \u201cI was prepared to go to Tottenham,\u201d Eze admitted, as quoted by The Athletic, \u201cbut from the moment Arsenal came, it was always going to be them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those Arsenal discussions were not brand new. Eze had a meeting with Mikel Arteta and sporting director Andrea Berta several weeks before Tottenham formalised their interest, informing his boyhood club he was eager to return to the Emirates. The Gunners had been weighing options that included Morgan Gibbs-White and Morgan Rogers before Eze intervened.<\/p>\n
On the day he was due to sign for Spurs, the 27-year-old rang Arteta to check whether a move to Arsenal remained possible. When a \u00a367.5 million deal was later completed, the Spanish manager reflected, \u201cThat shows you how much he wanted to come,\u201d underlining the forward momentum behind the transfer.<\/p>\n
Adjustment to Arsenal has presented challenges. Eze arrived from a Crystal Palace side built to sweep forward on the break and has yet to replicate his previous creative output. Across seven Premier League appearances for Arsenal this season, he has created just two chances from open play, fewer than seven of his teammates.<\/p>\n
Crystal Palace travel to the Emirates on Sunday afternoon with a compact shape that is likely to limit the space Eze enjoyed at Selhurst Park, but Arteta remains confident the midfielder can make an impact on what promises to be a \u201cspecial\u201d occasion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Eberechi Eze says he was ready to join Spurs before Arsenal\u2019s late bid sealed his move in detail…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4020,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,465,1163],"tags":[1081,1162,1019],"class_list":["post-4021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-crystal-palace","category-transfers","tag-adaptation","tag-analytics","tag-creative-players"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}