Arsenal spent a lot of money to sign Nicolas Pepe from Lille in the summer of 2019 but the winger is yet to prove his worth in the Premier League.
The Gunners splashed £72m on the Ivorian international and at that time, it looked a really good buy since he had scored 22 goals and provided 11 assists in just 38 Ligue 1 matches for Lille that season. But all that swagger has faded away over the past two seasons and right now, Pepe is struggling even to get regular starts at Arsenal.
This season, Nicolas Pepe has played in only 23 games in the Premier League(12 of which have been starts) and so far, he managed to score only five goals. While his performances have sort of been on the rise in the past few months but Mikel Arteta has already given the perform or perish message to the 25-year-old.
The Spaniard said, as quoted by The Mirror: “Nico has this ability – it depends on him, we can help him as much as we want but he needs to have the right mindset and consistency to do what he can do.
“Because that is the level that we are going to ask of him, the level I am asking of him – if it is something below that he is not going to play but if he does what he can do he will have a big chance to play because he has got incredible ability.
“He just needed to change his mindset. He needed a period of adaptation and that is gone now. So we cannot rely on adaptation again, now it is about performance and he can do it.
“He has got the players to support him, a manager that trusts him, he has got all the staff that are willing to help him and all the team-mates who really like him because he is a really likeable character so there are no excuses.”
Nicolas Pepe was on fire in the Ligue 1 but the Premier League is a different beast altogether And the level of competition in England has just been too much for him to handle.
Thankfully, Arsenal are not playing in the Champions League which is why Pepe has gotten even more time to settle down. But if the Gunners can get back into the European top tier next season then Mikel Arteta will have a really tough call on his hands.
The manager could either stick with Nicolas Pepe, hoping he will come good or he can look to cash in on him in the summer and look to bring in a more experienced winger into the side.
