Eddie Nketiah has put an end to his nine year association with Arsenal, leaving the club to go across the City and join Oliver Glasner's Crystal Palace in a permanent deal worth around £30m.
Eddie Nketiah moves across London
At 25, Nketiah is not a kid anymore and leaving Arsenal for regular game time is the best thing that could happen to his career. Palace played some scintillating football under Glasner last season, and with the likes of Eberechi Eze and Adam Wharton behind him, Nketiah can be sure he will get the requisite service in order to score goals at Crystal Palace.
The striker scored five goals last season, but he only started ten of those games and scored at a rate of a goal every 216 mins which is pretty good, but of course it is harder to sustain that over a larger sample size so we shall see how it works out for him at Palace.
Nketiah joined Arsenal from another London side, when he signed for the club after leaving Chelsea in 2015. He famously scored a minute into his Arsenal debut against Norwich in the Carabao Cup in 2017, before adding another goal to make it a brace that helped the Gunners win the game 2-1 on their way to the final that season.
But, as alluded to above, the striker has found it hard to hold down a place in the Arsenal side and it is clear that he needs to get regular game time if his career is to progress. Other Hale End graduates like Emile Smith-Rowe and Charlie Patino have also departed the club on a permanent basis to further their careers this summer and it was only a matter of time before Nketiah did the same for his own career.
The weekends game against Chelsea will probably come too soon for the 25-year old, but he could well be in line to make his debut against Leicester after the international break.