Arsenal: Preparing for Nicolas Pepe via Eden Hazard, not Gervinho

Arsenal are preparing for the arrival of Nicolas Pepe, and rest assured, he bears more similarities to Eden Hazard than Gervinho.

Arsenal‘s transfer window just got serious with the reported agreement to sign £72m Nicolas Pepe from Lille. The prolific Ivorian, now 24-years-old, has been on the up and up these past few years and it was always determined that he would jump to a bigger club this summer, but you could be forgiven for doubting that the bigger club would be Arsenal.

Naturally, coming from Lille, Pepe is going to draw some comparisons. Many Gooners still haven’t recovered from the acquisition of Gervinho and the subsequent flop he turned out to be, but you may know another Lille winger by the name of Eden Hazard.

Granted, no two players are so similar that they are going to follow each other’s exact career path, but it does beg to mention that, by production alone, Pepe is much more a Hazard than he is a Gervinho.

The proof is in each player’s penultimate and ultimate year at Lille, where we see two very different stories.

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In Eden Hazard’s penultimate year at Lille, he knocked home seven goals and added ten assists. Both Pepe and Gervinho managed 13 goals and four assists, giving each player 17 goal contributions in that second-to-last year.

But it is in the ultimate year that we see the differences springing up. The difference as in the continued progression. Because after those seventeen goals, Gervinho did improve to 15 goals and nine assists, good for 24 goal contributions. Still a seven goal improvement.

Hazard and Pepe, however, are quite different. Hazard jumped to 20 goals and 16 assists, while Pepe jumped to 22 goals and 11 assists. That is a 19 goal improvement for Hazard and a 16 goal improvement for Pepe, showing a greater capacity for improvement than what Gervinho showed.

True to form, Gervinho never exceeded that big year at Lille. His closest was a solid nine goal, ten assist year at Roma. And while Hazard hasn’t topped that year either, he has consistently hovered in the 20-30 goal contribution range his entire career, with his first year at Chelsea raking in nine goals and eleven assists.

It’s safe to assume that Pepe is going to experience a drop-off. Maybe something around the 15-20 goal contribution mark. And that is perfectly okay. The key thing is that we’ve seen the proof of what he can do, and we have no reason to doubt his continued improvement since he’s shown it already.