Benched, hooked and a World Cup spot at serious risk: Eberechi Eze faces huge week in fight to avoid 'transfer flop' status at Arsenal

Having led Palace to FA Cup glory at the end of last season, winning the club their first-ever major trophy, it was widely accepted that Eze would move on in the summer. One of the Eagles' favourite sons was going to be afforded the chance to spread his wings on a bigger stage.

For most of the window, his destination appeared to be Tottenham, who had earmarked Eze as a target for several years, dating back to his days in the Championship with Queens Park Rangers. It seemed Arsenal, who released Eze as a schoolboy, had cooled their interest and Spurs would sign the playmaker in late August once Palace had lined up a replacement, while head coach Oliver Glasner was also hopeful of keeping him around for both legs of their Conference League play-off.

Tottenham had pretty much agreed agreed a deal in principle with both Palace and the player when Arteta called Eze to see if he would rather join Arsenal instead, greasing the wheels for one of the Premier League's most memorable hijackings. On August 23, Eze was unveiled as the Gunners' newest player, presented to a boisterous Emirates Stadium crowd during their 5-0 win over Leeds United. With this, he immediately became a cult hero.

The first couple of months of Eze as an Arsenal player delivered signs of real promise. He came into a team that was already missing Bukayo Saka due to injury, while primary playmaker Martin Odegaard would miss a sizeable chunk of autumn fixtures with knee and shoulder issues, too.

Arteta's side returned from the September international break with the bit between their teeth. They demolished Nottingham Forest 3-0, with Eze grabbing a long-awaited first assist for his boyhood club, before securing two monumental results in the context of their Premier League campaign.

First up, Manchester City came and parked the bus at the Emirates Stadium after taking an early lead through Erling Haaland, but deep into second-half stoppage time, Eze's clipped through-ball found Gabriel Martinelli, who dinked the onrushing Gianluigi Donnarumma and salvaged a point.

The following week, Arsenal went a goal down at Newcastle, but scored twice in the final 10 minutes to secure an almighty comeback win. Though he didn't contribute to either goal in that victory at St James' Park, this was arguably one of Eze's best performances for the Gunners, who played with tremendous intensity and were eventually rewarded for a dynamism that has largely been absent in more recent months.

Between these fixtures, Eze scored his first Arsenal goal on the first stop of their run to the Carabao Cup final, netting against Port Vale in round three. Ironically, his first Premier League goal was a belter against former club Palace.

Eze has also been able to taste Champions League football for the first time, coming up with assists in impressive home triumphs against Atletico Madrid and Bayern Munich. Arsenal romped through the league phase to finish first with a perfect record of eight wins from eight games.

The crowning moment of Eze's time at Arsenal so far, however, once again came at the expense of Tottenham. Prior to the first north London derby of the season in November, Spurs boss Thomas Frank was asked about the hijacking of the summer. "Who's Eze?" was the Dane's response.

It was a moment reminiscent of the old days of Arsenal Fan TV (before its rebrand to AFTV). Tottenham supporters gleefully remember when a preview for the 2014-15 derby featured someone saying, "Whose name is Harry Kane?" before the then-emerging striker grabbed a brace as Spurs came from behind to win 2-1 late on at White Hart Lane.

Well, the main difference here was that that was a fan on a channel designed to create a stir in the discourse, not the manager of one of the teams. In Michael Jordan-esque fashion, Eze appeared to take that personally. Frank's Spurs tried to park the bus at the Emirates Stadium with a 5-4-1 formation, but that was no match for the magic of Eze, who became the first Arsenal player since 1978 to score a hat-trick in the north London derby as the hosts won 4-1.

"That's a good [feeling]," an on-top-of-the-world Eze said post-match. "Enjoyable day, happy to help the team and to win today is special. It feels special, man. I'm grateful again, this is what I pray for. I prayed for it today, a hat-trick, and I got it today so I'm grateful to God."

Across the four Premier League games which followed the mauling of Spurs, something changed between Eze, Arteta and Arsenal. He was hauled off with the Gunners drawing 1-1 at 10-man Chelsea and came off the bench in a 2-0 win at home to Brentford before alarm bells started to ring.

Eze was criticised for his defensive work-rate in Arsenal's last-gasp 2-1 defeat at Aston Villa, losing the run of Matty Cash for the hosts' first goal of the game. As such, the England international was withdrawn at half-time. He managed to keep his starting spot against rock-bottom Wolves the following week, but in a game Arsenal eventually won 2-1 thanks to two own goals, Eze was hooked before the hour mark and was an unused substitute for the next four Premier League games.

Towards the end of this barren run, Arteta came out to explain why Eze had disappeared from the picture having been a constant presence in the line up beforehand.

"I look at the stats and when was the last time that somebody scored a hat-trick in a north London derby? Many, many, many years ago. So that tells you about the difficulty, but it's not a coincidence," he began. "After international duty, he had two days off, and he said, 'no, I want to train the next day, I want to practice.' He was asking me questions about his positioning, about his pacing, about this. When a player has that talent, has a brain, and he has that willingness to be better and to make an impact in the team, these things happen.

"I speak to every player. The players always need to understand and the manager needs to understand how each one is feeling. Assess games, assess the emotional state. Ebs has played more games, more minutes than ever at this time. He's played I think 22 out of 28 games or something like this. He's never played that much football, so we're on a good track."

Arteta is an excellent orator and he managed to calm some nerves in the Arsenal fanbase over Eze's reduced role even in an injury crisis, but there remained sceptics over this spin, particularly given how little the 27-year-old has played since.

Eze made three sparing appearances off the bench in Premier League games against Liverpool, Forest and Manchester United - none of which Arsenal won - before being handed a measly nine-minute cameo at the end of their 4-0 battering of Leeds. Another piecemeal offering came in a 3-0 victory over Sunderland, this time 23 minutes, before Eze was at last given the opportunity to start in last week's trip to Brentford.

Yet after only one half of a football game that more closely resembled its gridiron cousin from across the Atlantic, Eze, for the second time in his Arsenal career, was unceremoniously taken off at the break. He failed to get on the ball enough or create anything of note in a match that was begging for a player of his ilk to take control of.

After this 1-1 draw, Arteta again explained his rationale behind Eze's substitution, with Odegaard coming on in his place. "It was a tactical choice," the Spaniard confirmed. "We needed a different profile because of how they were pressing, and we started the second half much better."

Eze seemed to find his groove again in a slightly deeper role in Arsenal's routine 4-0 win over Wigan Athletic in the FA Cup on Sunday, but even beyond the caveat of their League One opposition, attention was focused on Saka starting as the No.10 and Arteta's comments suggesting he could play there in future.

"That's something that’s a possibility and I wanted to try it, and we might use it in the future," he said of Saka's new role. "There are still so many games, competitions and different scenarios to play in this season, and that's a possibility that we have.

"He's more central, he's closer to the goal. It's a bit more difficult for the opponent to get his reference constantly. He can interchange positions with a wide player as well, and he's so good at picking those spaces. When he's there, he can really hurt you with the ball."

Eze has never been a regular starter for England, though since his appearances at Euro 2024, he has been a mainstay in the squad and accrued 16 caps. Coming out of the November camp, he seemed a shoo-in for Thomas Tuchel's World Cup squad, though there's no such guarantee now.

Morgan Rogers has been Tuchel's go-to No.10 since taking charge and the Aston Villa star is continuing his heroics at club level. Real Madrid's Jude Bellingham has been relegated to understudy in a sense, but the only factor that could compromise his participation at the World Cup is injury. That leaves a relatively out-of-form trio of Eze, Cole Palmer and Phil Foden fighting for a spot, you'd imagine.

Eze and Palmer are neck-and-neck when it comes to making an impact off the bench for the Three Lions, though it's been several years since Foden did anything of note in an England shirt. That could prove a key differential, but it would help Eze if he could find his feet again before the summer.

A weird quirk of Eze's game is he is generally a fantastic late-season performer. The final third of the year tends to be when he produces his best work.

Take 2024-25, for example. Eze ended the campaign with 14 goals and 11 assists in all competitions as Palace won the FA Cup. Nine of those goals and three of those assists came after the March international break. In 2023-24, six of his 11 Premier League goals came from March onwards, as well as three of his four assists. Six of his 10 goals in 2022-23 were in that same timeframe. You get the idea.

We haven't even hit March this season, let alone the final international window, but Eze can't afford to wait as long to rev back up again. Arsenal are fighting on four fronts and his place at the World Cup is on the line. Wednesday's trip to Wolves and Sunday's visit to Spurs will provide him with two ideal chances to build momentum. If he can't deliver against the Premier League's two biggest crisis clubs at the moment, then when will he?