Mikel Arteta hailed the “aura” that Eberechi Eze has brought to Arsenal after he turned down a move to Tottenham and then scored a hat trick against them.
After Leandro Trossard opened the scoring on 36 minutes on Sunday, Eze scored the first hat-trick in a north London derby for 47 years with Richarlison’s sublime long-range strike the only reply Spurs could muster.
Eze opted against joining Tottenham when he left Crystal Palace in the summer.
Arteta said after Eze’s hat-trick: “Things happen for a reason. And after international duty [with England], he had two days off, and after one day he wanted to train, and he wanted to improve, and he wanted to do extra practice and he was asking me questions about this and that.
“When a player has such a talent, and his desire is at that level, then these things happen. And he fully deserves it. I’m so happy for him, because since the day that he came, he brought something else to the team.
“So it’s a joy, it’s an aura that this team needed and hopefully it will give him a lot of confidence to him and the team, that at any moment he can win us a game. That’s the ability that he has and he certainly needs to fulfil that talent.”
Arteta played down the importance of Arsenal opening up a six-point lead at the top of the Premier League after thrashing Tottenham.
On a weekend when both Manchester City and champions Liverpool were both beaten, the Gunners capitalised in emphatic fashion to move clear of Chelsea at the summit and when asked what the gap meant, Arteta said: “In this league? Not much.
“We are doing really well. We’ve been really consistent and that’s it. I mean, when you look at the results, whether they win or lose, the difference in the scoreline and actually what happens in games is really small.
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“We know that. We need players back immediately today. We’ve got Noni [Madueke] back on the pitch, which is great, but we’re still missing a lot of important players and we’re going to need all of them.”
After conceding a 94th-minute equaliser to draw 2-2 at Sunderland prior to the international break, Arsenal got back to winning ways and Arteta said: “At the end against Sunderland, we lost two points in the last kick of the game basically and we went to the international break with that bitter feeling because we didn’t concede any goals and we had ten straight wins [before that].
“We wanted to get back to earning that momentum again and the [north] London derby and today’s performance, it is a good start.”
