Mikel Arteta hails Eberechi Eze as star haunts former club Crystal Palace | OneFootball

Mikel Arteta hailed Eberechi Eze for repaying a chunk of his £67.5million transfer fee following his winning strike in Arsenal’s 1-0 victory over Crystal Palace.

Eze fired home against his old club with a sumptuous finish six minutes prior to the interval as Arsenal saw out their seventh consecutive victory across all competitions.

It was a far from a spectacular performance from Mikel Arteta’s men at the Emirates, but the triumph takes Arsenal four points clear of second-placed Bournemouth in the table, and six ahead of Manchester City following their 1-0 defeat at Aston Villa. Defending champions Liverpool are a point further back.

There was only a muted celebration from Eze following his goal against the club he served for five years. But it marked a much-needed first league strike in seven attempts for the England international since his big-money switch.

And Arteta, when asked if Eze’s goal provided the kind of “magic moment” he was signed for, the Spaniard, replied: “Yes, 100 per cent.

“That’s what big players do and he’s certainly a big player and hopefully that’s going to give him a big boost and confidence to generate many more moments like this because that’s the moment that sometimes defines a season.

“I didn’t see any difference with him before the game. He is always super relaxed and always has a big smile on his face. It might have been inside him because he was at Palace for a long time, and he has such strong feelings and gratitude for that club. Today was a very special game for him.”

Arsenal took just one point in their away fixtures at Newcastle and Fulham, and at home to West Ham and Crystal Palace last season.

This time around they have registered 12 points from 12, and Arteta continued: “I just told the boys that I value this victory more than any other victory this season because we knew the difficulty of it.

“We are where we are (in the league) and it is a credit to us because we’ve been very, very consistent, but it really doesn’t mean anything other than let’s keep doing a lot of things that we’re doing really well. There are things to improve as well to give us better margins.”

The only sour notes for Arsenal in their pursuit of a first league title in 22 years came with injuries to William Saliba, Declan Rice and Riccardo Calafiori. The former did not emerge after the interval while Rice and Calafiori were replaced in the second half.

A cryptic Arteta added: “On William there were two things related to his substitution, and with Declan I don’t really know because it was a knock. I don’t know if it was his calf or Achilles. Tomorrow we will have more news.”

Palace have now lost three of their last four games across all competitions and manager Oliver Glasner said: “When you give Eze a free shot inside the box it is very often a goal.

“We benefitted on many occasions last season but today we suffered. He scored the winning goal like this in the FA Cup final. Then I was pleased, but today I was the opposite. I was sad.”