Scoring Success The Only Thing Lacking for 'Free' Eze as He Faces Old Team Palace

“Forever thankful, man, that’s how I feel – that will be me for life,” mused Eberechi Eze on his period at Crystal Palace during an interview with fellow footballer Ian Wright. Wright, a fellow south Londoner who completed the move at the same age – 27 – during 1991, seemed the perfect person to share what Eze described as “the realization of a prayer we started 20 years ago as a family.”

Yet for a minor minority of Palace fans with lengthy memories, it revived unpleasant emotions about an event that occurred at Highbury in May 1993.

Wright had not restrained himself after scoring Arsenal’s decisive goal on his first appearance against Steve Coppell’s side at Selhurst Park a few months earlier – “I expressed joy because Palace fans were being nasty,” he later explained – and further damaged the connection by touching the badge when he gave his team the lead in a match his old side desperately needed to win to escape relegation. “After I scored I remember Nigel Martyn saying: ‘Wrighty, what are you doing? You’re going to send us down,’” he recalled.

In 2006, a 42-year-old and long-retired Wright, who had recently been chosen as Palace’s greatest ever, helped to bury the hatchet with those who bore a grudge by kissing the Palace badge after scoring in a charity match organized for his former teammate Geoff Thomas. “We had our issues for a while but I think we’ve resolved them now,” he said, even if some still to differ.

For Eze, who on Sunday meets Palace for the first time since his £67.5m move, there are no such problems. As the player who scored the goal that secured Palace’s historic FA Cup in the Wembley showpiece in May, he will always have a special place in the club’s history. That was part of an extraordinary run Wright would have been proud of, Eze scoring 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 sparkling form played a key role in persuading Arsenal to outbid Tottenham for the services of the player they turned down 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 scoring. 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 mostly been used in a No 10 role that he last filled at Queens Park Rangers rather than in a withdrawn 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 chance 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 plans 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 playmaker. It has aligned with six straight victories. Another Eze goal against Latvia this month and his outstanding performance against Atlético Madrid in midweek have offered promising signs that the goals will soon start to flow 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 rate 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 disallowed contentiously in the opening game against Brentford and had to wait until 29 December for his second.

While Guéhi was blocked 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 reallocate the club record fee. Palace have the highest expected goals of any Premier League club, Yéremy Pino having stepped 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 deadline day 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 swift reunion with players with whom Eze made history for Palace in May will make Sunday an poignant 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 taste for trophies.

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