Brace yourselves, I’m about to get very nerdy for a moment.
Perhaps the most well-known concept in the Pokémon franchise is that of evolution — specifically, one species of Pokémon evolving into another species. Squirtle morphs into Wartortle, which in turn becomes Blastoise. That is, if you picked the true best starter in the original games.
But a lesser known aspect about evolution in the games is that you can interrupt it. If a Pokémon starts evolving, you can simply press the B button on whichever Nintendo console you’re playing on to abruptly halt the process. In doing so, your little magic fighting creature remains exactly as it is for the time being and you can continue your adventure as you like.
But why would anyone choose to do that? There are a few reasons. Some Pokémon — such as Treecko, Torchic, and Mudkip in the third generation of games — learn attacks that their evolutions do not. Some evolve in other ways in addition to by leveling up, and players might be after a particular species obtained through one of those alternative methods; Slowpoke evolves into Slowbro at level 37, but it can also become Slowking when traded while holding a King’s Rock, while Eevee has eight different evolutions, three of which involve leveling up. A lot of the time it’s down to players simply wanting to progress through the game with their favorite Pokémon, which may happen to be kinds that haven’t fully evolved.
But of course, there is a price to pay. For as the game’s story progresses, things get harder. Higher-leveled and stronger Pokémon appear in the wild, and the trainers you face are smarter and more aggressive. As the difficulty of the campaign scales up, you’ll find that the Pokémon you kept from evolving, you kept from increased stats and a wider move pool, will struggle more and more.
And I don’t mean it will use the move Struggle. I mean it will be knocked out in battle more often. It will require more training and grinding in order to overcome climactic moments like challenging the Elite Four or facing off with a legendary Pokémon. If you’re not careful, preventing evolution will make a character you were so excited to have on your team feel more and more like a hinderance.
Watching Eberechi Eze these days, I can’t help but think that Arsenal have similarly stopped him from evolving.
Five months ago, Eze’s standing in this Arsenal team felt more secure. Although his debut season hadn’t quite been spectacular, it had certainly included some spectacular moments. In his opening salvo at his boyhood club, the Englishman had scored five goals across two North London Derbies (becoming the first player to notch a hat trick in the fixture since Alan Sunderland did in 1978), and had finished with ten goals and six assists in all competitions. He had also produced tremendous winners against his former club Crystal Palace, Newcastle United at a crucial moment in the title run-in, Bayer Leverkusen in the Champions League Round of 16, and (less impressively but still a thunderbolt of a strike) Mansfield Town in the FA Cup Round of 16.
To top it all off, Eze concluded his first season at Arsenal as a Premier League champion. And his new club wouldn’t have been able to do it without him. It made for an uplifting tale — the Englishman had returned home after being released from Hale End at 14, been unveiled dramatically at the Emirates Stadium, and helped his boyhood club win their first title in 22 years.
But then, things went south for Eze. He missed a penalty in the shootout of the Champions League final, drawing mockery from rival fans and contempt from some of the Arsenal faithful. It seems from that moment, the Englishman’s relatively nonchalant demeanor has been mistaken for laziness and wielded against him. That perception has festered into a negative lens through which many Gooners continue to view Eze.
Furthermore, Bruno Guimarães arrived from Newcastle, Martin Ødegaard recovered from an injury-riddled 2025/26 season, and Myles Lewis-Skelly completed his transition from left back to midfielder. Gabriel Martinelli, Leandro Trossard, and Gabriel Jesus all departed during the summer. These developments combined to mean that there was no longer any room for the man wearing no. 10 to operate in the center of the pitch. After spending the better part of a year operating as essentially an eight, circumstances have shunted him back out to the left flank. While it’s hard to argue against Arsenal’s current midfield options being among the best in Europe, it’s a shame nonetheless.
For this is how Eze’s evolution was interrupted. The Englishman had, over the course of his first season in north London, settled into his role as a two-way midfielder. After arriving as a left winger, Trossard’s rise as well as the fitness struggles of Ødegaard and Mikel Merino forced Eze to adapt. In doing so he had begun a transformation process, one that would see him become a deep-lying midfielder instead of a more offensive operator.
Eze even publicly affirmed this. After playing a more conservative role in the center of the park against Wigan Athletic, he was asked by reporters about which position he could play in the future. “CDM,” he responded. “I probably could play that, maybe late in my career.”
At the outset of this current campaign, he was suddenly asked to cancel this progression. He had to abruptly revert back to the previous stage of his maturation. It’s hard to imagine how this wasn’t a massive disruption for Eze.