How Eberechi Eze’s performance against Spurs redefined the nature of Arsenal’s title challenge

Having seemingly devoted the international break to proving that open-play goals are in decline in the Premier League, the stattos must have been crying into their anoraks by Sunday evening.

All that number crunching, all those painstakingly compiled tables and charts, undone at a stroke by Arsenal, the team upon whom they thought they could most rely. It hardly seemed fair. 

Before the weekend, Mikel Arteta’s side had scored 20 league goals, half of which came from dead-ball situations. Arsenal were undisputed kings of the set piece, just as they have been in each of the past two campaigns. The only real concern was whether an over-reliance on such situations might come back to bite them later in the season, should opposing teams identify methods to thwart their carefully rehearsed routines. 

Now, after a thumping 4-1 win over Tottenham in which Eberechi Eze scored his first senior hat-trick – becoming the first player since Alan Sunderland in 1978 to bag three goals in a north London derby – and all four goals came from open play, Arsenal’s rivals have more to worry about than just set pieces.

How Eberechi Eze answered Arsenal’s doubters

As a riposte to those who wondered how Arteta’s side would fare without the injured Gabriel Magalhães, whose attacking threat in deal-ball scenarios has been such a key component for the Gunners, it was emphatic. 

Yet it was also a performance that added credence to the views of those who argued Arteta’s failure to start Eze at Manchester City and Liverpool in the early weeks of the campaign pointed to an overly cautious mindset. Arsenal emerged from those games with just one point from a possible six; if the evidence of Eze’s extraordinary first outing in the north London derby is a bellwether of things to come, he is unlikely to be overlooked in a big game again for some time to come.   

An imperious performance from the former Crystal Palace man began with an impudent lob of the kind in which Emmanuel Petit once specialised, a scoop over five opposing players that put Declan Rice through on goal with the game less than three minutes old.

Eberechi Eze’s incredible stats against Tottenham

On an afternoon when he would go on to have six shots – double the number of anyone else on the pitch, and double the total the entire Tottenham team mustered – it was a moment of brilliance that set the tone. With three goals from four efforts on target and seven touches in the opposition box – again, more than any other player – Eze dominated every meaningful attacking metric.

That pattern is echoed across his broader statistics. Nine outfield players including Victor Gyökeres, Bukayo Saka and Leandro Trossard, the scorer of Arsenal’s opener, have played more minutes than Eze this term, but none has produced more than his 25 shots. He is level with Gyökeres as Arsenal’s top scorer this season despite making two fewer starts.

And as per Opta, his open-play xG (expected goals) of 1.9 is bettered among non-forwards/wingers only by Chelsea’s Enzo Fernández and Morgan Gibbs-White of Nottingham Forest, on 4.0 and 2.3 respectively. Again, both have played more minutes than Eze. 

But forget the numbers. The clearest evidence that Eze is the man to solve any difficulties Arsenal may have in scoring from open play was the eye test. With one electrifyling performance, he has effectively redefined the nature of Arsenal’s title challenge.   

When supporters look back on a historic evisceration of their north London rivals, it will be memories of Eze weaving past Spurs defenders to score three thumping goals – right foot, left foot, right foot – that come flooding back. Not the stats – and certainly not Arsenal’s penchant for set-pieces.