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mikel arteta Welcome god bless you To repay part of his £67.5 million transfer fee after scoring the winning strike in Arsenal’s 1–0 win crystal Palace,
Eze scored against his old club with a superb finish six minutes before half-time, giving Arsenal their seventh consecutive win in all competitions.
It was a far cry from the spectacular performance from Mikel Arteta’s side at the Emirates, but the win moves Arsenal four points clear of second place. bournemouth in the table, and six points ahead of Manchester City after a 1–0 defeat at Aston Villa. Current champions Liverpool are one point behind.
There was only a mild celebration from Eze after scoring the goal against the club he served for five years. But it marked a much-needed first league strike in seven attempts England International since his big money transfer.
And when Arteta was asked if Eze’s goal provided the kind of “magical moment” he was signed for, the Spaniard replied: “Yes, 100 per cent.
“That’s what big players do and he’s obviously a big player and hopefully this will give him a big boost and confidence to produce many more moments like this because those are the moments that sometimes define a season.
“I didn’t notice any difference in him before the game. He’s always very relaxed and always has a big smile on his face. Maybe it’s in him because he was at Palace for a long time, and he has such strong feelings and gratitude for that club. Today’s game was very special for him.”
Arsenal took just one point from their away fixtures at Newcastle and Fulham last season and at home to West Ham and Crystal Palace.
This time they have recorded 12 points from 12, and Arteta added: “I told the boys that I value this win more than any other win this season because we knew the difficulty of it.
“We are where we are (in the league) and it’s a credit to us because we’ve been very consistent, but it doesn’t really mean anything except that we keep doing a lot of the things we’re doing really well. We also need to improve on some things to give us better margins.”
The only downside for Arsenal in their quest for a first league title in 22 years came with injuries to William Saliba, Declan Rice and Riccardo Calafiori. The first did not emerge after halftime while Rice and Calafiori were replaced in the second half.
A cryptic Arteta said: “There were two things related to his replacement on William, and with Declan I don’t really know because it was a knock. I don’t know if it was his calf or Achilles. We’ll have more news tomorrow.”
Palace have now lost three of their last four games in all competitions and manager Oliver Glasner said: “When you give Eze a free shot inside the box it often leads to a goal.
“Last season we had the advantage on many occasions but today we suffered the loss. He scored the winning goal like that in the FA Cup final. Then I was happy, but today I was the opposite. I was sad.”