Floating hat-trick hero puts Arsenal on Eze street

The England forward has made a decent start to his Emirates career but this performance was stick-it-on-a-mural stuff

NOVEMBER 23: Eberechi Eze of Arsenal celebrates scoring his team’s third goal during the Premier League match between Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur at Emirates Stadium on November 23, 2025 in London, England. (Photo by David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)

Has there ever been a softer, more delicate act of derby day brutality than this, a hat-trick in a 4-1 win where every goal must have felt like being bludgeoned to death with a feather‑light Parisian macaron?

Eberechi Eze’s third goal, the killer, the legend-maker, was the funniest, and also the most telling. It was made by a thrust down the left, and by Leandro Trossard’s smart pass. But it was made as an aesthetic by Destiny Udogie falling over, not because of any real act of trickery, but because Eze stopped suddenly, out there in the middle of all that heat and light, taking the ball on the edge of the Spurs box and simply ceasing to move, like a squirrel on a branch.

Udogie tried to follow and slipped, leaving Eze in his own clean, clear pocket of space to slip the ball into the corner of the Tottenham net. All three of his goals seemed to be made from this same stuff, remarkable for their ease, for the effortless power in his movements. Eze is remarkable to watch in this sense, a footballer who seems to be moving about on his own distinct plane just above ground level.

Maybe it’s something to do with the cage-ball pedigree, a youth spent trying above all not to shred your own knees (Mesut Özil credited a youth spent on gravel pitches for his own lightness on his feet). Either way Eze never seemed rushed here, never really seemed to be in contact. He had played well for Arsenal, had made contributions and looked settled. But this was something on another level entirely, an act of stick‑it‑on‑a‑mural club football ultimacy.

It was perfectly timed too. For Arsenal this was another of those regular weekly occasions, the Game You Just Have to Win If You Want To Be Champions. This time results elsewhere had added to the pressure. Once or twice in the past two seasons there has been a sense of the rest of the Premier League pulling over into the cart track, hedgerows brushing the wing mirrors, arm waving out of the driver’s window, saying: “Take the road, it’s clear.” Only for Mikel Arteta’s team to come over a little cautious, peering at the ridge up ahead for oncoming tractors.

Here they just floored it, albeit against a truly dismal Tottenham team, but in a way that felt significant. This was a game that might have felt heavy, ominous, lead-weighted, as Tottenham dug in early on. How to combat this? How about drifting about like a dandelion spore, scoring a negative calorie hat-trick, playing football that weighs less than the air around it?

Eze started as an orthodox No 10 and was the embodiment of lightness in a team that have needed it at times. It is of course a misleading quality. So much graft and struggle goes into being able to play like this at the elite level. Eze has had a tricky road to this point but has always seemed to know his own worth. And yes, it also helped that the opposition were Thomas Frank’s Spurs.

It was a lovely November day at kick-off in north London, the kind of day when the low winter sun gives everything a slightly crisper outline. But for 20 minutes almost nothing happened.

Spurs presented themselves as a thick white line. They seemed to be aiming for a kind of football made out of clunky disconnected units. A set piece move. Some time-wasting. A pre-planned hoof.

In the opening 27 minutes the two-man Spurs midfield pivot completed four passes between them. It was hard to tell in this period if anyone was having a good game or a bad game, because there was no game. Perhaps this was a sign of a plan working, but only if the plan was to produce something that felt like bad 1980s rugby.

At 2-0 down Frank could be seen furiously chewing gum, hunched over his iPad, ferreting for answers. What do we do here? Throw the ball further? Produce even more moments of disconnected football-style product? It feels, right now, like an uneasy fit with the Tottenham identity.

Arsenal scored from one of the first moments of actual football, Trossard twirling to finish after a lovely pass from Mikel Merino. Eze got his first shortly afterwards following a pass from Rice. His second came 36 seconds into the second half, rolled into the corner from his customary position six inches above the turf.

And so Arsenal now go into the last week of November, the meat of this thing, seven points clear of Manchester City and 11 clear of the champions. It is an excellent position from which to push on. Not to mention an indicator of how far Arteta has come with this new team; from a slightly cagey start, to winning here with a distinct and very Eze sense of lightness.

Guardian