Eberechi Eze has described his first impressions of Arsenal teammates and singled out one who impressed him more than the rest. “Everyone is sort of what you expect them to be,” Eze told GOAL\u2019s Beast Mode On podcast, with former EFL journeyman striker Adebayo Akinfenwa. He said the group carried the level he anticipated but one team-mate went further than he had expected.<\/p>\n
“The expectation of all the players is high. I\u2019ll say one player who has gone even beyond the high expectation I already had\u2014because I\u2019d heard good things about him\u2014was Jurri\u00ebn Timber. “He\u2019s a special player and a special guy.” Timber arrived at Arsenal from Ajax in a \u00a338.5 million ($50.3 million) deal in the summer of 2023. The Dutch defender, capable of playing at right back or centre back, suffered an ACL injury in his first Premier League appearance and missed most of his debut season.<\/p>\n
Since his return from that injury he has displaced Ben White as a starter. Eze emphasised the wider environment he has found at the club and how that helps players raise their standards. “I think for me, in an environment of people and you have a culture that is geared towards improving, these guys all want to improve,” Eze said of what he\u2019s encountered behind the scenes. “For me, it\u2019s a pleasure to be part of it and to see guys like him who perform the way they perform, who carry themselves the way they carry themselves. It\u2019s inspiring, for sure.”<\/p>\n
The combination of a growth culture and improved squad fitness is framed as critical to Arsenal\u2019s ambitions. This season, Arsenal have their best chance yet of ending the club\u2019s longest ever league title drought since being controversially admitted to England\u2019s top flight in 1919. Come May, it will hit 22 years. It is that mindset, and improved availability after injuries, which could ultimately pave the way for Arsenal to become Premier League champions for the first time since 2003\u201304.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Eze singled out Jurri\u00ebn Timber, saying he exceeded expectations and is ‘a special player’. this term<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4575,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,172],"tags":[1073,1081,984],"class_list":["post-4576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-epl","tag-acl-injury","tag-adaptation","tag-ben-white"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4576","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=4576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}