Why did Nicolas Pépé fail at Arsenal?
Why did Nicolas Pépé fail at Arsenal?
There is a feel good factor at the Gunners again after three commanding performances and comfortable victories over Crystal Palace, Leicester City and Bournemouth.
And with the transfer window coming to an end in just a week’s time, there is still yet more time for Mikel Arteta to recruit more talent to his already talented young squad.
But as ever, not everyone can be happy, and with rumours of Arsenal searching for another winger in the mould of Pedro Neto, Callum Hudson-Odoi and Yeremy Pino, one such player who is looking to leave is Nicolas Pépé.
It was announced on Thursday that Pépé would be heading to Nice on loan from the Gunners, just three years after moving to North London for an eye watering £72 million from LOSC Lille.
But why did Pépé fail at Arsenal?
Price pressure?
Pépé was signed by Arsenal for a club record fee in August 2019 after a sensational season in Ligue 1 with Lille, scoring 22 goals and assisting a further 11 times in 38 matches as Lille finished second in the league and qualified for the Champions League.
As often happens when a player has a season with those numbers in Ligue 1, teams will stand up and take notice and there was a long queue forming for the winger with clubs such as Bayern Munich and Napoli also in the race, but Unai Emery did enough to convince Pépé that a move to Arsenal was the right one for him.
And after such a high transfer fee, and coming to Arsenal after such a good season the year before brings pressure – something that perhaps Pépé has suffered from since the move from North East France to North London.
Time to adjust
It is well documented that the Premier League is a totally different ball game from other leagues around the world, including the rest of Europe’s top leagues, and often there is time required to adjust to a move to England’s top flight.
Some players are given time to make that move and settle into the most physically demanding league in Europe, but when you have the price tag of Pépé, time is unlikely to be handed to you.
And he did struggle in his opening season, scoring just five goals and assisting six times in 37 Premier League matches as Arsenal failed to qualify for the Champions League once again and Pépé being heralded as a rather expensive flop.
His second season was a marked improvement, bagging ten goals in his 35 Premier league games and scoring a further six goals with four assists in the Europa League – it seemed as though that new investment may have been starting to pay off.
Academy graduates shining
When Unai Emery was sacked just three months after Pépé was signed, Arteta took the reins and immediately ran things differently.
Bukayo Saka had already begun to make an impression, but he quickly became one of Arteta’s key men early in his tenure – directly clashing with Pépé for minutes.
Saka has since been joined by fellow wonderkids Emile Smith Rowe and Gabriel Martinelli in making the step up to the the Arsenal first XI, with all three fast emerging as key men in Arteta’s preferred starting team.
And with the three of them continuing to perform and Arteta sticking to his 4-2-3-1 formation with space for only two wingers, Pépé has quickly fallen down the pecking order.
And that leads to the current situation, where Pépé found himself not named in the side that trounced Bournemouth 3-0, with Martinelli and Saka starting, and Smith Rowe and Eddie Nketiah coming on in the wing positions.
Verdict
Time has run out for Pépé at Arsenal now, and his ticket to rekindle his form with Nice may have come at the perfect time, with minutes at the Emirates looking increasingly unlikely, just like The Gunners recouping their hefty transfer fee.
It is simply a move that has not worked for Pépé, who has won one FA Cup in his three-year spell.
Time will tell if a return to familiarity in Ligue 1 may help Pépé, who at 27 still is yet to reach his peak, Arsenal and Arteta will certainly hope he hits the ground running in the south of France to help them either make a bit more money on a sale, or to potentially fight for his place upon his return.
