I think it's agreed Eze is a "moments" player.
The problem of the adequacy of his game is about weighing his "moments" together with the degree to which the tactical logic of his game is understood by our ten other players on the pitch.
So I'm not worried about Eze's GA except in its symptomatic relation to this problem.
The eye test (and probably the numbers) agree Eze is less metronomic with his pressing, running and off the ball movement in possession than our other options Rice and Ødegaard. The effect is sometimes the rest of the XI doesn't use or get used by Eze as much.
He doesn't do as much triggering of the press or presenting to recirculate the ball as Ødegaard. He doesn't do as much tracking back, challenging or intercepting as Rice. He doesn't mechanically seek out the mechanical off the ball movements of our attacking automatisms. These are the stakes of what Arteta calls "relationships" and I think we lose some of these stakes when Eze plays.
The big bright side of this ambiguity is that the other side doesn't know what Eze will do either. That's the raw material he can convert into "moments", together with his incredible on-the-ball ability and his eye for an unusual goal or creative pass.
To my eye, when the conditions have been average or the opposition has been organised, the rate of Eze's conversion of opportunities to "moments" has been low. So the weight of his converted "moments" together with his ambiguous tactical contribution looks erratic. Yes, this is pretty similar to saying "he only scores or assists in some matches" except that I'm weighing a non-existent "moments" stat.
The remedy for me comes when Eze develops his "relationships" in terms of both their mechanical logic and the logic of his intermittent abandonment of logic in pursuit of "moments". This needs to be understood both by him and his closest tactical partners.
The objective is an Eze who probably looks more "boring" but also more "involved" to the eye, while the rest of the team also looks better on the whole with him in it, but Eze continues to find "moments" and to try to find them while rarely catching the team flat-footed.
Not going to do it myself, but I reckon measuring win percentage adjusted for opposition, and GA per minute adjusted for game state, and comparing these with Eze on the pitch versus our real options would give some insights.
Playing time and better conditions are the key, but I reckon there are signs of remediation already. Merino exemplifies the mixed and intelligent tactical style Eze could adopt with a different but no less elite skillset.
It's widely agreed our tactics lack a mercurial or contingent element and that could be our outstanding tactical deficiency. So until the whole idea of signing Eze falls apart due to its problems, which is very unclear, Eze warrants regular selection to see if the team can figure him out and vice versa.
