Football writer Sam Cunningham analyses Arsenal's 4-1 win over Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday.
Eberechi Eze had already endeared himself to Arsenal fans since a summer move from Crystal Palace, but there are few better ways to cement his place in their hearts than scoring a hat-trick in a north London derby against the rivals he turned down ahead of the transfer to the Gunners.
Watch: Eze's hat-trick v Spurs
Eze, the lifelong Arsenal fan, from an Arsenal-supporting family, let go by the Gunners as a teenager in 2011 before coming full circle 14 years later and scoring a treble against Tottenham Hotspur.
There are dreams, and then there is this.
"It's special,” Eze told Sky Sports. “I’m grateful. It’s what I prayed for. I prayed for a hat-trick and I got it today, so I am grateful to God.
"That was the prayer today. The hat-trick. God gave it to me and that’s faith, man. All my family is here and that makes it even more special for me."
And to think, the midfielder was on the verge of joining Spurs before Arsenal moved in and took the player from under Spurs' noses.
Ahead of the match, Spurs head coach Thomas Frank was asked if he thought he had signed Eze in the summer and joked “Who’s Eze?” before a smile spread across his face and he started laughing.
The pain of missing out was no joke, though, when Eze scored three fantastic goals and Arsenal moved six points clear at the top of the Premier League table.
Making history
After scoring the third goal, Eze put his gloved hand across his mouth, as though in disbelief at what he had done.
And to put this into context: it is such a rare feat that it was the first hat-trick for Arsenal in a north London Derby since Alan Sunderland in 1978, only the fourth ever and the first in the Premier League.
"That tells you about the difficulty and what he's done today,” Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta told BBC Match of the Day.
“To be fair he could have scored four or five. He's a big player who can create magic moments which unbalance a team.”
As a measure of how much Arsenal fans adore a player who shuns Spurs to join them, they unfurled a giant tifo (below) just before kick-off.
Written on it was: “The Arsenal. These streets are our own.” Above the message were pictures of Arsenal legends.
The biggest of all, in the centre at the top, was Sol Campbell, who infamously left Spurs for Arsenal in 2001 in a move that, naturally, enraged Spurs fans.
Contrasting game plans
Frank came with a game plan to defend deep and in numbers and frustrate the league leaders.
A back five frequently became a back six or seven as Arsenal controlled possession and patiently prodded and probed.
On the rare occasions Spurs had the ball when it went out of play, they took their time – the slow throw-ins from Destiny Udogie and free-kicks from Spurs goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario beginning to draw jeers from the home crowd.
By contrast, Arteta hurried to collect balls for his players to keep up a tempo Spurs tried desperately to suffocate.
But Arsenal kept looking for openings in the white wall and finally found one in the 35th minute.
Mikel Merino floated the ball perfectly over the Spurs defence and Leandro Trossard controlled it, span and beat Vicario with a deflected shot.
A crack exposed, Spurs crumbled, and in stepped Eze to dismantle them with one of the best performances ever in a north London derby.
Six minutes after the opener, Eze burst from the edge of the box between two Spurs defenders to make space and flash a shot beyond Vicario.
Within a minute of the second half getting under way, he found the bottom-left corner with an even better finish.
The match appeared over until Richarlison scored a phenomenal long-range strike, out of nowhere and from 35.3 yards, to pull a goal back.
Spurs' first shot on goal, in the 55th minute. It had shades of David Bentley’s volley for Spurs at Emirates Stadium in October 2008, which measured 35.7 yards.
But Eze completed his hat-trick and snuffed out any spark of a comeback with a shot into the right of goal, after a fine assist from Trossard, who drew three Spurs players towards him before passing across.
In doing so, Eze gave Arsenal supporters even more reason to love him by becoming the first Englishman to score in his first north London derby since Ian Wright and Kevin Campbell, in 1991.
Watch: Wright on Eze's hat-trick
❤️🥹 @IanWright0 knows how special Ebere Eze will feel after scoring his first @Arsenal hat-trick pic.twitter.com/uqtAUXwt2e
— Premier League (@premierleague) November 23, 2025
While everyone wondered how Arsenal would cope without the injured defender Gabriel, Spurs finished the match with an Expected Goals (xG) of 0.07 – the lowest in a Premier League match this season.
It means Spurs have now produced the two lowest xG scores of the campaign, having also registered an xG of only 0.10 against Chelsea.
“It is extremely painful,” Frank told Sky Sports. “I won't walk away from that. It was a bad performance.
"It was completely the opposite of what the intention was when we came here. We can only apologise to the fans for the performance.”
Goalkeeper Vicario echoed the sentiment of his head coach. "It was a very bad night for us,” he added.
“First of all, we have to apologise to the people that support us every day. They expected us to fight and today we didn't fight. That's not negotiable to do in football in this level.”
Big week ahead for Arsenal
For Arsenal, the result laid down a significant marker as the title race takes shape, after Liverpool and Manchester City slipped up on Saturday, losing to Nottingham Forest and Newcastle United respectively.
It was the perfect start to a big week, up next a UEFA Champions League match against Bayern Munich on Wednesday before they travel to Stamford Bridge to face second-placed Chelsea.
"We have really good momentum, but you can see how difficult every game in the Premier League is,” Arteta said.
“It's a long run. Let's go game by game. Let's enjoy tonight, then we have Bayern here and Chelsea away. We have a tough week."
Nonetheless, talk is already turning to Arsenal winning the title, after so many near misses since their last title triumph 21 years ago.
“When Eze came I thought maybe he wasn't a game-changer,” former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher told Sky Sports.
“Apologies. I certainly undervalued the importance of that signing and he looks like he can make the difference for them and they can go on and win the title."
Ten years ago, a young Eze published a post on what was then Twitter, expressing his belief in going on to achieve big things.
"I swear imma make It and when I do, they're gunna show this tweet lol," he tweeted. He was right.