_**Eberechi Eze looks set for a sensational return to Arsenal after the Gunners hijacked Tottenham’s move for the Crystal Palace attack-minded midfielder \[Liam Asman/SPP\]**_
HE’S coming home – and what will delight Arsenal supporters even more is, he’s snubbing Spurs to do so.
On Wednesday morning it appeared for all the world that Eberechi Eze was going to Tottenham. The deal was done. Personal terms reportedly agreed.
Spurs fans were frantically pressing the refresh button waiting for the breaking news that they had got their man; their WhatsApp messages no doubt already typed: “We have signed one of your own!”
Eze has always been very open and honest about his footballing journey. Long before he became one of the most exciting players in the Premier League – an FA Cup-winning hero with Crystal Palace – he was a sobbing teenager in his bedroom trying to come to terms with the fact that Arsenal had released him.
Fast-forward to 2025 and it appeared, in his desperation to play Champions League football, the boyhood Gooner was about to do the unthinkable: join the bitter rivals.
But that’s not how this love story was meant to end. And, out of nowhere on Wednesday afternoon, Arsenal rode in and hijacked the deal.
Terms and conditions that Spurs chairman Daniel Levy was said to have been working on for more than a week, the Gunners got done in less than 24 hours.
The final outcome is that Arsenal will pay Palace a guaranteed £60m plus £7.5m in add-ons to bring Eze home, with a medical due to take place as soon as today (Friday).
Gunners boss Mikel Arteta and the club’s sporting director Andrea Berta have been weighing up a move for Eze all summer, but were thought to have opted against pursuing a deal for the 27-year-old – instead prioritising strengthening other areas of the pitch, as well as trying to offload those players that Arteta now deems surplus to requirements.
That all changed this week, however, as reports started to emerge that Kai Havertz had sustained a knee injury. Arteta is expected to offer an update on the severity of the problem ahead of Arsenal’s game against Leeds United tomorrow (Saturday) at the Emirates.
If Havertz is sidelined, it would leave Arteta one Viktor Gyokeres injury away from being back where he found himself last season, having to rely on midfielder Mikel Merino to lead the line.
That would surely be seen as unacceptable in a campaign being described by many as “silverware or the sack” for the Spaniard.
There is, of course, always the possibility that the Havertz injury had nothing to do with Eze’s pending arrival; a plan that the Gunners were always going to swoop in and sign the attack-minded midfielder late in the day.
Arsenal fans won’t care either way – for now they are just itching to see Eze holding up the No 10 jersey. The fact that the signing has broken Tottenham hearts in the process is just the cherry on top of what has surely been the Gunners’ greatest ever transfer window.