Nicolas Pepe will forever be remembered as one of Arsenal's costliest mistakes given he arrived for an eyewatering fee of £72million back in 2019.
At the time, that figure was a club-record fee for the Gunners but the Ivory Coast international has fallen well short of the lofty expectations that greeted his arrival at the Emirates. With a feeble tally of 27 goals in 112 appearances, many of which came in the Europa League, Pepe failed to make the grade at Arsenal following his arrival from Lille.
He has returned to France while still being on the Gunners books, but last season's loan spell with Ligue 1 outfit OGC Nice failed to inspire any sort of significant turnaround in form from the wide-forward. Pepe made just 19 appearances for the French side last term before returning to north London earlier this summer, at which time he seemed to take aim at Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta.
The current Gunners manager was not the one who brought Pepe to the club, that was in fact Unai Emery and Arteta has never seemed to truly take to the Ivorian or view him as someone that could be of any use to his plans. In turn, Pepe admitted he was not exactly overjoyed with the treatment he was subjected to.
"People say that he identified me as a player that wasn’t up to the level in his team, in his philosophy. It’s completely false. When he arrived, he had (Manchester) City’s philosophy. He had a squad that was filled with quality and backups in every position," he told Colinterview.
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"When he spoke to me, he said he counted on me, he wanted me to do this or that, and you have to focus on that. He improved me in every way. He spoke to me the whole time, I watched videos with his assistants all the time. He really believed in me. "He said I had incredible potential, so we need to extract that potential.
At the end of the first season, he spoke with me and told me to do this or that. The second season comes along, I was a substitute. I was going mad. How could I be a substitute when he said he counted on me? Everything is spinning in your head. I was a substitute. It was at the time when they signed Willian. He is a number 10 or a winger. But he plays on the wing for like 11 or 12 matches in a row."
HAVE YOUR SAY! Has Pepe been mistreated by Arteta at Arsenal? Comment below
Mikel Arteta has deemed Nicolas Pepe surplus to requirementsSome may argue it was due to being frozen out, others will claim it is because of Arteta's man-management style, but ultimately the facts remain that Pepe fell down the pecking order of Arsenal attackers far too quickly for someone that cost as much as he did.
It is a damning indictment of how far the Ivorian's stock fell at Arsenal that not only did he lose his place to a 20-year-old Bukayo Saka without putting up much of a fight, Arteta spent the summer of 2021 searching for a back-up right-winger instead of calling upon Pepe.
Even when he failed to find one, the Gunners boss was still willing to ship Pepe off on loan to Nice. With that being said, his Arsenal misery has finally come to an end, with the 28-year-old agreeing to join Turkish side Trabzonspor for a reported fee of £3m.
While there has been no official confirmation of the move from Arsenal's end, Pepe has made clear the move has happened with a short statement on Instagram. It read: "Very happy to arrive in this country of football. New challenge for me, looking forward to getting back on the pitch and with the team bringing Trabzonspor to the top of the league!"
The statement was liked by Edu Gaspar, Arsenal's sporting director, which would suggest the deal is as good as complete. Pepe failed to make any of the mathday squads for the Gunners' opening four games of the new Premier League season.
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