Michael Olise finished ninth in the 2026 Ballon d’Or. Days later, his old Selhurst Park team-mate Eberechi Eze spent Arsenal’s biggest win of the season on the bench at Anfield, carrying a problem his manager still hasn’t explained.
Two of the most talented players at Crystal Palace left south London a season apart, Olise for Bayern Munich in 2024 and Eberechi Eze for Arsenal in 2025. One has become the creative heartbeat of a European giant. The other, now 28, is still trying to work out where he fits.
That isn’t a verdict on Eze’s talent. It’s a question about role, rhythm and the man already standing in the position he plays best.
What did Arteta say about Eze at Anfield?
Eze wasn’t in the starting XI for Sunday’s 1-0 win at Liverpool, and he stayed an unused substitute as Kai Havertz’s 16th-minute goal, from a Declan Rice cross, gave Arsenal their first league win at Anfield since 2012 and a three-point lead at the top. Christos Tzolis started instead, despite not having played since his hamstring injury, and lasted 84 minutes.
Mikel Arteta explained the call afterwards. “It’s the energy that he had in training,” he said of Tzolis. “When I asked him the question, how convinced he was. We had an issue with Ebs as well, it was incredible that he was in the squad today.”
He gave no more detail than that, and used the moment to praise the medical and performance staff. “These are the margins sometimes when you win a football match, whether you have somebody available or not,” Arteta added. We went through how that game was won in our Liverpool 0-1 Arsenal report.
How Olise became Bayern’s playmaker
Olise’s numbers in Germany are relentless. He scored 20 goals and made 20 assists in 55 games in his first season at Bayern, 2024-25. The next campaign he went up to 21 goals and 26 assists in 52. This season he already has 10 goals and five assists in only 11 appearances.
The output only tells half of it, though. Olise can finish a move or find the team-mate better placed to finish it. He breaks lines with passes, crosses accurately, combines in tight spaces and drops a few yards deeper to speed up the attack. Nominally a wide man, he plays like a playmaker.
Bayern suit him, too. They control most matches and have runners who attack the box, so defenders can’t just shut off his shot. He isn’t a different player from the one Palace had. The stage is just bigger, and he has grown into it.
Is Eze’s Arsenal record as good as it looks?
On paper, Eze’s first season in north London was respectable: 10 goals and five assists in 52 games in 2025-26. Look closer and it gets complicated. Five of those 10 came in two north London derbies against Tottenham, a hat-trick in one and a brace in the other.
Those afternoons made him a cult hero, and nobody at the Emirates will hear a word said against derby goals. But take them out and the steady stream of decisive moments that made him Palace’s main creator never really arrived. In his last full season at Selhurst Park, 2024-25, he had 15 goals and 11 assists in 43 games.
This season has been thinner still. Eze has two goals and one assist in 12 games in all competitions, and both goals came in the Champions League, against Lille and Bayern. In the Premier League he has started twice in nine rounds, came off the bench in four and didn’t get on at all in the other three, Anfield included.
The Odegaard problem
At Palace, Eze lived in a 3-4-3 with two wing-backs doing the wide running. That let him drift inside, receive between the lines, carry the ball and arrive near the box. It’s where his turn under pressure and his eye for a pass do the most damage.
At Arsenal, his job keeps changing. Some weeks he’s out wide, receiving further from goal and having to beat his man with fewer passing options around him. Other weeks he’s the alternative to Martin Odegaard, which means competing for the one central role Arteta’s attack is already built around.
That’s the real gap between the two former Eagles. Olise was handed space and turned his creativity into Bayern’s main weapon. Eze is still looking for the role that lets him touch the ball where he’s most dangerous, and fewer minutes in alternating positions make it harder to build rhythm or an understanding with those around him.
Does he play in Prague?
Arsenal travel to Slavia Prague on Wednesday night (8pm UK time) in the Champions League, the competition where both of Eze’s goals this season have come. Whether the problem Arteta mentioned clears in time is the first question, and we flagged him as a doubt in our Slavia Prague vs Arsenal preview.
If he’s fit, Europe looks like his best route back into the side. Max Dowman’s domestic ban doesn’t apply in the Champions League, so the competition on the flanks isn’t easing, but the games keep coming every three days, as Arteta pointed out at Anfield, and that gives a player who is fit a chance. We made the case for Arteta’s other midfield options in our piece on Myles Lewis-Skelly.
Verdict: Eberechi Eze needs a fixed role, not more comparisons
The Olise comparison will follow Eze around for as long as Bayern keep winning with their former Palace star at the centre of everything. It’s a bit unfair. They joined different clubs in different circumstances, and Olise walked into a team that needed exactly what he does.
Eze’s talent hasn’t gone anywhere. What he’s missing is a settled job. Until Arteta decides whether he’s a wide man, Odegaard’s understudy or something in between, he’ll keep producing flashes, a derby hat-trick here, a goal against Bayern there, rather than the weekly influence Arsenal paid for. Get him fit, give him a run in one position, and then judge him.
