EBERECHI EZE has gone full circle with his blockbuster move to Arsenal.
The boyhood Gunners fan was released by the North Londoners aged 13 and has had to fight his way up the leagues to get a second shot at the Emirates.
SunSport’s Tom Barclay and Jack Rosser have spoken to a number of people who have worked with the 27-year-old attacker during his journey to the top.
Here, they explain what they saw in the person and the player…
IAN HOLLOWAY – WHO GAVE EZE HIS PRO DEBUT FOR QPR IN THE FA CUP IN 2017
IT wasn’t me who found him. He was already in our system.
One day, the Under-21s were playing outside, and both Marc Bircham and Curtis Fleming, who were my staff, came running in and said, ‘Gaffer, you’ve got to come and see this kid. You’re going to love him’.
I said, ‘Who’s he playing for?’. They went, ‘Us!’.
I went, ‘That’s handy’. So I went out and loved everything he did. I thought ‘wow’. I brought him into our training. Wow.
So I played him in a game for his debut and after three or four minutes, it looked like he was shot.
I had to bring him off after 18 minutes, where the nervous tension gave him all sorts of reactions down his hamstrings. We had a laugh about it after. ‘If that sniper hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have had to bring you off!’.
He developed after I left really. But what we saw was someone who could run and drift and float with it, like, completely insane. Unlike anybody else. They’re all very different, aren’t they?
Wilfried Zaha had explosive stuff. If you watch Eze play now, it’s almost slow motion.
He’s moving in and out on people, and he sees things and he does it.
It’s just pure talent. And I love it. I’m so pleased for him.
He’s deserved everything he’s done. He’s so humble. And such a joy to be around. When you look at his smile, it lights up the room. To see the belief that he has in his own ability now and the belief that his Lord will help him let it shine is a credit to him and his family.
I knew he had the talent. We all knew he had the talent.
But knowing he’s got it and doing it at the very top is very different. I’m delighted for him. I feel gutted for Palace but I’m delighted that he’s at Arsenal.
You could see it in his face when he came out of that tunnel last week. I had a tear in my eye, mate. I know that’s like heaven for him.
I used to say to him, ‘Let the light shine, son’. Just like the movie Coach Carter.
Well, his light used to scare him or he was confused. Now, it’s a joy to watch.
GARETH AINSWORTH – HAD EZE ON SIX-MONTH LOAN AT WYCOMBE IN 2017
I HAD signed a player from QPR, a left-back called Jack Williams, only about 19-years-old.
I don’t think he’s in the game anymore but he can take some credit for Eberechi coming to Wycombe — because he was the one who said, ‘Gaffer, there’s a boy in the Under-23s, he’s absolutely ripping it up.
And I think you’d better go and see him’.
And you don’t ever get that from a young pro. So he must have been blown away.
I also had Marcus Bean, who I’d played with at QPR, probably ten years previously. Beany always had an eye for a player. So I said, ‘Let’s go and watch this kid’.
So we went to watch him. I can’t remember the game, I can’t remember the scorer.
All I remember is this boy in the middle of the park, absolutely running rings around people.
I just thought to myself, ‘This is somebody who could be magic in League Two for Wycombe’.
I remember Eberechi’s agent was concerned about him dropping down as he’d fought so hard to get to QPR. We brought him in and in training he was just fantastic, just way above what I had.
He made his full Football League debut for us. So I’m really proud to have given him that.
I pulled him up a couple of times about his defending. But attacking-wise, he was fantastic.
I remember one meeting where I questioned his defensive responsibility when the opposition were breaking on us.
I stopped the video and showed he didn’t track his runner. We laughed about it when I saw him at a recent Dartford game, when he was watching his brother.
I left him out of the next game. And I think the penny dropped, because it never happened again.
My memories of Eze are the humility. We actually got promoted the season when he came to us but he went back to QPR in January.
I thought, ‘Oh b*****ks, that’s my star man gone!’
We got promoted in the second-to-last game at Chesterfield. We all got the bus back and had a few beers on the way home.
Wycombe Wanderers opened up a little suite for the fans to come in and celebrate promotion with the boys.
When we got back, Eze was waiting for us. Even though he was this Championship potential superstar, he came to Wycombe, just to be there with the boys.
MARK WARBURTON – MANAGED HIM AT QPR FROM 2019 TO 2020
EBERE’S one of those players, he does something every day in training which catches your breath.
He might just bring a ball down from a 60-yard diagonal, drop a shoulder and take a shot with his right foot.
Or he plays a pass. You realise what a talent he is.
In terms of his personality, what an outstanding character.
I don’t want that to sound petty or distracting from the football. He’s just an outstanding human being as well.
During Covid, we had to make some difficult calls to unwell supporters, that type of thing.
There was one particular day I was swamped with calls and the guy in the media department said we needed to make another difficult call to a supporter who didn’t have long to live.
Ebere made the call, and I remember hearing from the head of media about two hours later, who said, ‘Wow, the family called up and said that Ebere was outstanding’.
He spent an hour talking to them, inviting them to his box, that type of thing.
You realise for what is a very young player at the time, what an outstanding character he is.
He is definitely mature beyond his years.
SHAUN DERRY – COACHED EZE AT CRYSTAL PALACE
HE was a dream to coach. You didn’t coach him really, you just watched him.
I just watched him, his graceful movement around a football pitch that is very different to 99.9 per cent of other people.
Recognising that he was a different type of player and he was that golden ticket, I guess. He was one of three, at the time. We had himself, Michael Olise and Wilfried Zaha.
So we had three very different types of players to what your average team has.
Every day he would be the last one in from training.
You don’t watch these great players and just think that they can turn up at 10 in the morning and leave at one in the afternoon.
This guy was out every single day, bar none.
I remember him and Olise spending so much time after a training session.
They would be practising the set-plays, practising their individual skills, just like two-touch, making sure that their own game was developed in the way that they wanted.
At Crystal Palace they have got this fantastic relationship with the charity which runs really closely with the football club.
Whenever the club invited the charity into the training ground, the time that Eze would spend with the kids, the smile that he had was genuine.
Sometimes you can see the players who enjoy spending time with children.
Ebs, it wasn’t put on at all, that was totally natural, the relationship he had with the kids.
That would be something that I would say sets him apart from most other people.
His sheer joy and delight at giving something back to the kids.
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