Arsenal: Don’t look now, but Nicolas Pepe is doing it

Arsenal needed some offensive help this summer in two key areas and, I don’t know if you noticed, but Nicolas Pepe is the man with the plan.

The (way too) early criticism of Nicolas Pepe‘s inaugural year at Arsenal had me laughing, and it still does, honestly. How fans and media alike can sit there whinging about a player who hasn’t even played 500 minutes yet is beyond me, but in the midst of their complaints, you may have missed the fact that he is doing everything we needed him to do.

Going into last summer, we needed two things. These two things were supposed to be in Mesut Ozil and Henrikh Mkhitaryan‘s wheelhouse but as we all found out, those two were past their prime. Denis Suarez didn’t help either.

The youth movement wasn’t ready yet (though you could debate that now), and it was a massive void. You can have the best strikers in the world, but if you can’t figure out creative ways to get them the ball in dangerous positions, it’s all a bit of a waste.

We needed two things, as mentioned. We needed someone who could create chances. Simple enough. There are so many creative players in the world. Just two chances a match is all I was looking for.

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And we needed someone who could dribble. Someone who could take the ball by himself and cause the defense trouble. We can’t rely on the all-too-familiar semi-circle of passing around the opposition third, hoping something will magically open up.

Eventually, you have to instigate something, and that is what Nicolas Pepe is doing.

In the two categories we needed help in the most, Pepe is clobbering the rest of the Gunners roster. In terms of dribbling, he’s averaging 3.7 completed per match. The next closest is 1.8 from Joe Willock.

And creating chances? While Pepe hasn’t touched the 2.0 target yet, his 1.8 is tops on the team, with Sead Kolasinac serving as the next highest at 1.3.

Nicolas Pepe is doing exactly what we asked him to do, and he is doing it well. Obviously he’s doing it so well that no one else is even close to his levels of production thus far into the season. And that’s a testament to the guy, seeing as how it was a question how long it would take him to settle.

He’s still settling. But while he settles, he has been a massive boon on an often stale attack.