Four real and compelling reasons why Eberechi Eze might choose Spurs over Arsenal

Eberechi Eze may well be on his way to north London. What’s not so clear at this volatile time with the season about to begin and the transfer window reaching the climax of its summer-long dance is whether he lands on the red or white side. If indeed he does make the move at all.

Which, it’s well worth remembering, he still very much might not.

But if he does have to decide whether to join Arsenal, who are looking to go one better and win the Premier League after three straight second-place finishes, or Spurs – who are Spurs – then surely the answer is obvious?

But what if, and hear us out here, it isn’t obvious? What possible reasons are there that someone might in fact choose Spurs over Arsenal at this time. After giving it a lot of thought, and we do mean a lot, this is what we’ve managed to come up with.

The Managers
We accept that not everyone shares our view of Mikel Arteta and his unspeakable antics, but when you’ve got a manager who is equally disliked by the F365 wokerati as he is by Richard Keys, then you must accept you’ve got a manager who is very annoying to a lot of people.

Some players might love his zany psychological experiments or his inability to recognise the limits of his technical area or the suspicious perfection of his hair. But it could definitely put a lot of others off.

Spurs, meanwhile, are managed by Thomas Frank, who just seems like a very decent egg. In fact he seems such a solid citizen that one can even look past the crime of having a name made up of two first names, which is normally a solid indicator of a wrong ‘un. Imagine if Mikel Arteta had two first names. Exactly. You’d cross the road to avoid him.

Fair warning, there’s a lot of absolute sh*te to come in this feature, yeah? But we can say with utter no-fooling earnestness that ‘Frank or Arteta?’ definitely feels like a very different question to answer than ‘Spurs or Arsenal?’ at this time.

Competition for places
We’re generally pretty sceptical about ‘World Cup year’ chat. Specifically because it seems to be an idea that places the self-doubt and imposter syndrome felt by ordinary people into the world of professional footballers, where we suspect it is vastly less common.

If two clubs are both trying to chuck £60m around to try and buy you, you’re not that likely to be consumed by doubts about whether you’d even get in the team for those clubs. And thanks to the guaranteed fixtures provided by the expanded Champions League, both teams will have a lot of games and opportunities anyway.

But Eze is in an unusual position, on the fringes still of England selection and competing in positions where England are conspicuously stacked.

With Thomas Tuchel having already made it clear that he doesn’t even really care if you’re playing in a semi-retirement league as long as you’re playing, it stands to reason that he would also be willing to pick players even if they do happen to play for Spurs.

And Eze would surely play much more football for Spurs than he would for Arsenal, because Arsenal have a squad of good players and Spurs – as they showed to an almost sarcastic degree in the Super Cup – have a small handful of good players and very, very little else.

The scope to make a noticeable positive difference of the sort that catches the international coach’s eye is surely greater at Spurs, even if the scope for success might be lower.

But even if we take away all that, Eze would almost certainly play more football at Spurs than he would at Arsenal, and playing more football is what – most – footballers would quite like to do please.

Echoes of glory
If it’s silverware you’re after, then look no further than Europa League holders Spurs. Unlike serial trophy-dodgers Arsenal, Spurs are trophy winners. It is what they do. So accustomed are they to winning trophies that sometimes even winning a trophy isn’t enough to save a manager, while at Arsenal the acceptance of mediocrity means Arteta is once again rumbling on unquestioned into yet another season of his project – we’ve honestly lost count of what phase he’s in now – despite it delivering absolutely no tangible heft to the ol’ trophy cabinet for over five years.

If you doubt this point, consider that Spurs are currently absolutely distraught after losing the Super Cup despite in that failure matching Arsenal’s greatest achievement of the last half-decade of beating PSG on xG.

Spurs have set their sights so high that even in failure there is an echo of glory. There are levels to this game.

No actual choice
In the unlikely event you’ve not been swayed by all the very serious and compelling arguments thus far, then this one is impossible to argue with. Eze might choose Tottenham over Arsenal if in fact he is not actually able to choose Arsenal at all because they don’t stump up the cash to either meet the soon-expiring release clause or to satisfy Crystal Palace further down the road.

If the choice becomes that between a real and concrete Tottenham offer that actually exists and a hypothetical one from Arsenal that doesn’t any perhaps never will, then that might just shift the needle a touch to the white side of the bitter north London divide.

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