Arsenal Vs Aston Villa: Nicolas Pepe, please score

£72 million, club-record signing Nicolas Pepe is yet to score for Arsenal. When they Aston Villa on Sunday, he has a great chance to break that duck.

Strikers are a funny old breed. While all players’ form will indulate with respect to their self-belief and confidence at that specific time, it is attackers — and goalscorers in particular — that tend to play up and down with respect to their mental state.

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And that confidence is often linked to the goals that they score. Or perhaps more crucially, the confidence seeps away when the goals are lacking. Olivier Giroud was a prime example of this, a centre-forward who would flow through the gears when he is playing well and slouch into the mud when he wasn’t.

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This mental impact on performance is exceptionally pertinent early in players’ tenures at clubs. When they move to new teams, they are, naturally, keen to impress from the moment they step into the squad. There is an insatiable eagerness to produce early. As a result, when new signings make a slower start to their time at a club, especially if they are attacking players, it can have a detrimental effect on the remainder of their performances.

When Arsenal signed Nicolas Pepe for £72 million this summer, he was expected to be a leading scorer and supplier in the squad. While Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang will be the primary goalscorers, of course, Pepe was signed to be a supplementary option, ideally getting into double figures of goals and assists. So his early-season drought is not ideal.

So far this season, Pepe has played 333 Premier League minutes. He is yet to score and has just one assist, and that was a fairly simple pass into Lacazette, who then worked his magic to score from a tight angle. That is not all that problematic in and of itself, at this early stage of the campaign anyway, but it is becoming so in the way that it clearly impacts Pepe.

As his goal drought extends, the Ivorian is increasingly pressing for that first goal. His worst performance of the season came last weekend against Watford, Pepe overworking to get himself into goalscoring positions, doing too much with the ball and not letting the game come to him, playing with instinct.

On Sunday afternoon, newly promoted Aston Villa come to the Emirates. If there is an ideal match for Pepe to break his goalscoring duck, this would be it. Arsenal should see a lot of the ball, Villa likely to sit deep and soak up pressure, which should provide Pepe with plenty of opportunities to dribble at defenders, put crosses into the penalty area, and unleash shots on goal.

As form and confidence continue to slip away, Pepe needs to make something happen. The ball needs to hit the back of the net. Anyway, anyhow, he just needs a goal. And once he has that, we may begin to see his very best.