Yesterday, Nicolas Pepe joined Turkish team Trabzonspor on a free transfer, 4 years after he joined Arsenal for £72million. Just want wrong for Pepe at Arsenal?
I was excited when we signed Pepe. It felt like a huge statement.
Just turned 24, he had scored 35 Ligue 1 goals in the previous two years for Lille from the right wing. We had signed one of the most in demand attackers in Europe.
At 6′ 2″, Pepe had pace to burn and a box full of tricks. He also had a wand of a left foot. It felt like he had all the physical and technical attributes to be a Premier League superstar.
“Arsenal did one hell of a deal,” former Lille owner Gerard Lopez told talkSPORT. “They got a player that other people wanted and they got a player whom one club [Napoli] were offering more money for.
“It was Pepe’s management team that asked us to go to Arsenal and so we accepted slightly less money than we would have got somewhere else.”
So what happened?
Tought first season
In his first season at Arsenal, Nicolas Pepe was inconsistent. But so was Arsenal.
A lot of fans point to his “scintillating form” under Unai Emery, but he only actually scored two league goals before the Spanaird in November.
He finished the season with just 5 league goals having played under 3 different managers.
Arsenal finished 8th that season, and the team had struggled throughout. But Pepe took a brunt of the criticism having joined us for such a big transfer fee.
Arteta-Ball
Mikel Arteta is often criticised for not getting the best out of Nicolas Pepe. But in the Frenchman’s second season at the club (and Arteta’s first fall season), he scored 16 goals across all competitions. 10 of these came in the Premier League.
Whilst his output was decent, it did not tell the whole story.
Pepe often drifted through games, doing very little. He would then, on occassion, pop up with a goal. This is not how Arteta wanted to play.
You look at Arsenal’s front line now – Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Jesus and Grabiel Martinelli – and they all work very hard for the team. They do not play on the fringes of the game waiting to get the ball. They look to move across the pitch and find the ball themselves.
Pepe showed in his second season that he was perhaps the wrong sort of player for Arsenal.
At Lille, he could neglect his defensive duties, and often hung about on the half-way line as Lille looked to play counter attacking football. This gave him time and space in the opponents half to unleash his ability.
Arteta looked to play a more possession based game, with the aim of keeping the ball in the opponents third of the pitch. This means less space, less time. Pepe failed to adapt his game to having to play with opponents in a lot closer attendance.
Despite his obvious talents as an attacker, Arteta was clearly becoming increasingly frustrated by his inability to follow instructions.
Arteta was building a team where the strength was in the XI rather than any individual talents. Pepe failed to grasp that he needed to work for the team, not just himself.
Language barrier
Pepe’s 3rd season saw him score just a single league goal and start 5 Premier League games.
During an international break in March 2022, Mikel Arteta spoke passionately about the importance of his players being able to communicate together in English.
“You cannot create your figure, your identity, within the dressing room and the club without being able to communicate,” was one line from the Spaniard.
A week later, during an interview before a game for the Ivory Coast, Pepe said “ It is also about communication. Sometimes it’s not easy to communicate with the language barrier.”
Arteta expects his teams to play in a very complex manner. He and his coaches do a lot of one to one coaching with players to ensure that they know what to do and where to be like it is second nature. It is a lot harder to explain, and understand, the complex instructions if you do not have a grasp of the language being spoken.
When Pepe came to the club, he was taken under the wing by French speakers Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexander Lacazette. This probably slowed down his English as the pair would translate for him, and speak only French socially.
After 3-years in England, you would have expected Pepe to be fairly fluent in English, but it was not much better than when he joined.
He was struggling to learn on and off the pitch…
Bukayo Saka
During 2021/22, Nukayo Saka had played at both left back and on the left wing. He was clearly a talent, but had scored just 5 league goals against Pepe’s 10.
The next season, some quarters heavily criticised Arteta for playing 20-year-old Englishman Bukayo Saka ahead of Pepe. They saw Saka as an inferior player and an example of Arteta “playing his favourites”.
Arteta (and many Arsenal fans) saw Saka for what he was. A potential world class player, and he responded with 11 league goals and 7 assists.
I do not think it can be underestimated about how Saka impacted Pepe’s career.
It must be very disheartening for a 26-year-old to lose his place to a then 19-year-old after hitting double figures in the leage
If Pepe was bad at listening and unable to take on instructions, Saka was the complete opposite.
I imagine Saka is a dream for a manager to work with. Always listening, always learning, always working hard. It is those attributes that often lift a player from being very good to being world class.
Last season, Saka scored 14 league goals and added a further 11 assists. Only Mo Salah produces more on the right wing in the Premier League, and you will struggle to name too many more right wingers in world football who are better. Saka is simply one of the best in the world.
Final thoughts
Whilst Saka has only just turned 22 and continues to get better and better, Pepe found himself in a position where no one wanted him. He has ended joining a team that finished 6th in the Turkish Süper Lig last season.
I always think you begin to get an understanding on how a player is viewed by the experts by where he ends up.
Whilst us fans have a tendancy to hype players up and put them on a pedestal, those views are destroyed when a player departs for a lowly club.
Take Folarin Balogun. Demanded to be a regular starter at Arsenal. Demanded to leave. Arsenal fans dug out Arteta for not giving him a chance. But then no other top club came in for him. Ended up at Monaco who finished 6th in France. If he was as good as he (and some fans) claimed, he would have been picked up by a much better club.
Pepe is the same.
Nice did not want to re-sign him after a very average season on loan. No other Premier League side sniffed around him. nor anyone from French side. Or Spanish. Or German. Or Italian. And so on.
He has ended up at a Turkish side who are not in Europe and finished 31 points behind the champions Galatasaray.
A lot of miss-truths have been typed about Pepe’s time at Arsenal.
He was poor under Unai Emery, had his best season under Mikel Arteta, and then lost his place to Bukayo Saka. That is the real story.
Enjoy your Saturday.
Keenos
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 