Arteta knows this is the season he must land a major prize, and to do this he has been heavily backed by Arsenal’s hierarchy.<\/p>\n
As well as Madueke, the Gunners have concluded moves to sign Spain’s outstanding midfield man Martin Zubimendi in a deal worth up to \u00a360m and, at least 12 months too late, a recognised striker in Viktor Gyokeres, signed from Sporting Lisbon for \u00a364m.<\/p>\n
In Eze, who had two years left on his Palace contract, Arsenal will get a versatile forward rich in natural talent who is a match-winner – as he proved when scoring the winner against Manchester City in the FA Cup final in May.<\/p>\n
This was a follow-up to the spectacular right-foot finish that set Palace on their way to a 3-0 win over Aston Villa at Wembley in the semi-final. Eze also scored the Eagles’ opener when they beat Fulham 3-0 at Craven Cottage in the quarter-final.<\/p>\n
Eze has demonstrated he has the temperament and talent for the big occasion when inspiring Palace to the first major trophy in their history.<\/p>\n
Arsenal will hope he has plenty of those occasions ahead.<\/p>\n
He is a scorer and creator of goals, adding real threat to Arsenal’s front line, with 14 goals in all competitions last season.<\/p>\n
Eze was a boyhood Arsenal fan and was part of the club’s academy until he was 13. He may have been initially keen on a move to Spurs, but once the Gunners showed their hand was only one part of north London he was heading to.<\/p>\n
He has achieved his goals the hard way, spending time at Fulham, Reading and Millwall before signing for Queen’s Park Rangers. He left Loftus Road for Palace in a \u00a319.5m deal in August 2020.<\/p>\n
Spurs believe they did all they could to conclude a deal – apart from actually concluding it – but it is a hammer blow to chairman Daniel Levy and manager Thomas Frank, who also thought they had a deal for Morgan Gibbs-White in the bag only for him to sign a new contract at Nottingham Forest.<\/p>\n
Arsenal will revel in the local rivalry of snatching away a prime transfer target for Spurs, but the wider context demonstrates the Gunners are deadly serious about ending the wait for success that now stretches back to 2020.<\/p>\n
Eze has previously admitted to “crying for a week” when he was let go by Arsenal in 2011, but this gifted forward has now been given a golden opportunity to make up for lost time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arteta knows this is the season he must land a major prize, and to do this he has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4100],"tags":[94,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-361254","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115065052604061563","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}