  We present preliminary results for the masses and decay constants of the
$\eta$ and $\eta^\prime$ mesons using CLS $N_f = 2+1$ ensembles. One of the
major challenges in these calculations are the large statistical fluctuations
due to disconnected quark loops. We tackle these by employing a combination of
noise reduction techniques which are tuned to minimize the statistical error at
a fixed cost. On the analysis side we carefully assess excited states
contributions by using a direct fit approach.
