With the interlull fully now upon us, and yet no actual games on the immediate aftermath, it feels inevitable that the focus of the media – when not pouring over the hilarious state of Man United – is to look at potential January transfer deals.

I kind of get it. We’re about seven-odd week’s until the beginning of January, there are column inches to fill, plus it makes sense that clubs will be starting to look at how they can bolster their squads for the second half of the season.

We all know what we need. But also sometimes you get a perfect storm of a situation like we have, i.e. we’ve just laboured to a 1-0 win over a newly promoted side, our attack probably should have don a little better (Noni aside, who we’ve all said is in form and was very good against Hull) than it has, plus we know that we kept the powder dry in the summer because of our sales of the left wing position, and failure to replace Trossard and Martinelli with one additional player as well as Tzolis in that position.

I have to be honest for you, I genuinely wanted it to be Eze. I figured that for Palace he kind of operated in that left half-space, we didnot really need a chalk-on-the-boots left winger anyway, so Eze and Tzolis is more than enough firepower to replace Trossard and Martinelli and besides, the goal and assist output of Martinelli last season was such that we didn’t really need to have a mega upgrade just yet anyway. I thought Eze was good for a solid 10 goals and maybe five to ten assists if he played regularly, so Tzolis only probably needed to get a similar amount, for the left hand side to more than do its job.

The challenge we obviously have is that the right hand side – with Saka’s injury – now has extra burden on it. Coupled with that, we have the fact that the left-hand side isn’t looking like it’s going to be able to deliver on the numbers we’d hoped.

To be fair, there is still time; Tzolis has started alright, has some assists, whilst Eze has some goals, but we’re at the quarter point in the season and I’d be lying if I told you that I thought the return we’d had from the wing positions was where I thought we’d be. I also thought this would be Eze’s moment to forge a place in the side when Ødegaard is fit too. It felt to me so natural that two on-ball talent merchants like they are, would get minutes together and would therefore flourish. However, how many times have they been seen together? I count only Forest away – in which everyone was poor on the day, Bayern away – in which he came on by default due to Saka’s injury, and then Everton at home. Eze was hooked at halftime against Forest, at Bayern he was good and scored, then at home to Everton I thought he did well too. But the Fleetwood game gave nobody any real credit, and as a result, we saw Tzolis in against Liverpool at Anfield. So Eze clearly isn’t doing enough for Arteta to warrant a prolonged run in the team, and if this news and rumours that Arsenal want a pacer wide-forward are true, it does feel as though his time to secure a spot is running out.

I do think he’s still going to pick up plenty of game time, but it feels to me like he’s the sort of player who needs to play regularly and find the rhythm, before we see the best of him. I feel like last season the injury to Martin Odegaard allowed that, but if my memory is correct, we didn’t start to see ‘proper Eze’ starting to look like the Palace Eze, until about February time. Unfortunately then, around the time of the League Cup, he picked up an injury just as he was getting up ahead of steam.

Maybe the fact he’s going away with England will give another chance for him to get some minutes? I suspect that will be as a bit-part player, because Anthony Gordon will most likely take the bulk of those minutes on the left, but if Eze can show some more flashes, then he’s got an outside chance of being involved from the start against Newcastle. He does need to show us some of the magic that is in his boots though.

I don’t think this is panic stations by the way. I don’t think we need to worry too much about game time with so little of the season played. But at this stage of the season you do start to see the beginning of patterns emerging (like how Zubimendi cannot seem to buy minutes from the start right now) and I feel like we are starting to see a little sign of that right now. If Arsenal then go out and grab themselves one of the wingers they’ve been linked to in January as well, you do feel as if it might be problematic for Eze to find the minutes he probably might need. That’s especially true as well if Odegaard continues to be in good form and stays injury free.

That’s pretty much it for news for today, I think, although perhaps a word on Ezra Konsa might be worthwhile. He played the full 90 against Hull, but has withdrawn from England duty. I have to think that he’s been carrying something, the medical staff have shown this to England, and hopefully it is just precautionary that he’s been withdrawn. But given Saliba’s timely return, if it is a little more serious than we think, we need to be getting Big Bill back up to speed over this international break. The benefits of having a quality squad, eh?

Catch you all tomorrow.