Under Mikel Arteta, nobody at Arsenal gets a free pass without the ball.

Every player is expected to press, track back and do the dirty work, and that’s a big part of why they’re so hard to beat.

Having played against Arteta’s Arsenal six times, Fulham midfielder Tom Cairney is well aware of how difficult they are to play. He explained as much speaking on Marc White Fixes Football.

“They can out-football you or they can beat you up,” Cairney said. “Right now [the Premier League title is] theirs to lose, in my opinion. Just because their bench is so strong as well. They have starters on their bench.”

When asked what makes them so tough, Cairney pointed to how hard it is to even get a shot away, and one Arsenal player in particular surprised him.

Tom Cairney is stunned by Eberechi Eze’s work rate at Arsenal

“Difficult to have a shot. And fair play to the manager. They all get behind the ball,” Cairney said. “I played last season, I came off with my neck, but even Eze, like he was around me like a rash, and I thought, ‘You weren’t like this at Palace. So how’s the gaffer got you doing this?’”

That’s quite the compliment for Eberechi Eze. At Crystal Palace, he was the player everything went through, and as Cairney suggests, his work without the ball was fairly lax. Since his £65million move to Arsenal last year, he’s had to add a defensive side to his game, and it clearly hasn’t gone unnoticed by opponents.

Will Eberechi Eze start against Nottingham Forest?

The question now is whether he’ll get the chance to show it at the City Ground on Sunday. With Christos Tzolis out injured, the left wing is up for grabs, and Arteta hasn’t settled on one option yet.

Noni Madueke got the nod there against Leeds last weekend, with Eze not getting on the pitch at all. Eze then started on the left against Lille on Tuesday and scored his first goal of the season, meeting a Bukayo Saka cross in the second half.

Arteta said on Friday that Madueke “will have more minutes in the next few games”, which suggests he could be back in the side. But after scoring against Lille, Eze will feel he’s done enough to keep his place.