🔗 Share this article

Always grateful, man, that’s how I experience – that will be me for life,” shared Eberechi Eze on his period at Crystal Palace during an interview with another footballer Ian Wright. The Arsenal legend, a fellow south Londoner who made the transfer at the same age – 27 – back in 1991, seemed the perfect person to share what Eze referred to as “the realization of a prayer we started 20 years ago as a family.”

Yet for a small group of Palace fans with lengthy memories, it revived bitter emotions about an event that took place at Arsenal's old ground in May 1993.

Wright had not restrained himself after netting Arsenal’s decisive goal on his first outing against Steve Coppell’s side at Selhurst Park a few months before – “I expressed joy because Palace fans were being nasty,” he later clarified – and further soured the connection by touching the badge when he gave his team the advantage 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 remembered.

In 2006, a 42-year-old and long-retired Wright, who had recently been voted as Palace’s greatest ever, helped to mend fences with those who bore a grudge by kissing the Palace badge after scoring in a benefit game organized for his former teammate Geoff Thomas. “We had our issues 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 transfer, there are no such problems. As the player who netted the goal that secured Palace’s first major trophy in the Wembley showpiece in May, he will always have a special place in the club’s history. That was part of an remarkable run Wright would have been proud of, Eze netting 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 pivotal role in persuading Arsenal to outbid Tottenham for the services 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 ruled to have been less than one metre from the wall as the shot was taken.

A single strike against Port Vale in the Carabao Cup is a unsatisfactory 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 occupied at Queens Park Rangers rather than in a deeper 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 setting 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 reaction to feedback that he played with the caution 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 assign Eze with replacing the injured captain, Martin Ødegaard, as the creative hub. It has aligned with six straight victories. Another Eze goal against Latvia this month and his impressive performance against Atlético Madrid in midweek have offered encouraging signs that the goals will soon start to come for him at Arsenal.

But if his Palace statistics are anything to go by, that is more probable 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 exit because he felt it gave Palace an chance to reinvest the club record fee. Palace have the highest xG 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 transfer deadline on an initial loan from the Spanish side Getafe and must start 10 matches for Palace to activate a £17m permanent move, was left out of the squad to face Bournemouth after arriving late back from national team commitments with Nigeria last week and has played only 57 minutes.

A quick 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 appetite for trophies.

“I’ve seen what you can do, not just for your colleagues 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 anticipate him to celebrate if he scores against Palace.