“For ever grateful, man, that’s how I feel – that will be me for life,” reflected Eberechi Eze on his time at Crystal Palace during an interview with Ian Wright when he signed for Arsenal. Wright, another south Londoner who made the move, coincidentally at the same age – 27 – in September 1991, seemed the perfect person with whom to share what Eze described as “the realisation of a prayer we started 20 years ago as a family”. Yet for a small minority of Palace supporters with very long memories it rekindled bitter feelings about an incident that occurred at Highbury in May 1993.
Wright had not held back after scoring Arsenal’s winner on his first appearance against Steve Coppell’s side at Selhurst Park a few months earlier – “I celebrated because Palace fans were being nasty,” he later explained – and further soured the relationship by kissing the badge when he gave his team the lead in a match his old side desperately needed to win to avoid relegation. “After I scored I remember Nigel Martyn saying: ‘Wrighty, what are you doing? You’re going to send us down,’” he recalled.
