Sublime Eze hat-trick wins weird north London derby

The stuff of club history, and maybe future champions.

- MIGUEL DELANEY

If it's still far too early to say this will be seen as the day when Mikel Arteta's side won the 2025-26 title, it is undeniably the afternoon that Eberechi Eze launched himself as an Arsenal player. Scoring a hat-trick in a north London derby will do that, especially when it was just the fourth in the history of the fixture and the first since 1978. There was of course the added edge that he was so close to signing for Tottenham Hotspur in the summer.

They could barely get near him in this 4-1 defeat. Even some within the club were rolling their eyes that this is the essence of Tottenham, but it's bigger than that. Eze took charge, and took off. The supreme third goal was some way to crown it all.

There was an electrifying sense of purpose about Eze from the start, which is a lot more than you could say for Spurs. It's instead hard to know what their purpose was.

They got the defeat their approach deserved, and were fortunate it wasn't much worse. Even allowing for attacking injuries, the depth to which Spurs sat deep was galling. Up until Leandro Trossard's clever opening goal, it was like all they actually wanted to do was create a massive physical block around their own box. Thomas Frank set out with three centre-halves and a lot of bulk around them. Get through us if you dare. Oh.