Arsenal: Here are some answers for your Nicolas Pepe questions

A lot of questions are being asked about Arsenal’s Nicolas Pepe, and while we don’t have all the answers, we do have things resembling answers.

Arsenal‘s attack failed in a big way against Burnley. It’s not like it was just one person failing either. It was a unified effort. Mesut Ozil couldn’t create anything, Gabriel Martinelli couldn’t find his stride and Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang couldn’t put the finishing touches on the small little chances we did create.

Apparently, even when this attack failed, Mikel Arteta thought that Joe Willock and Eddie Nketiah were more likely to help than Nicolas Pepe, our record signing. While I don’t want to criticize Mikel Arteta in his experimentation stages too much, I do want to revisit the questions circling the Nicolas Pepe signing.

Obviously Arteta didn’t make the signing. I get that. But we’ve all seen Pepe play. And we all know what he’s capable of, Arteta included. So why, in a match where we can’t score goals, do we not bring in our second-best goal producer?

That’s not the first question that’s been asked of Pepe, but it’s the latest of a slew that keep coming match after match.

In case you need a quick refresher, here are some of the questions that have been asked about Nicolas Pepe this year:

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• Was he worth the money?
• Is he the answer to our attacking problems?
• Is he the answer to our winger problems?
• Is he good enough?
• Was he a desperation signing?
• Why isn’t he trusted more?

That’s just off the top of my head. But more questions are not the answer when so few of the existing questions already don’t have answers.

Meanwhile, here are some of the things we have learned about Pepe this year:

• He’s ridiculously talented.
• He’s got the second most goal contributions in major competitions on the club.
• He’s one of the few people on this club who can create something all on his own.
• He’s one of the few people on this club who can create something out of nothing.
• He doesn’t need a lot of build-up to make something happen.
• He can dribble better than anyone else on the team.

These aren’t direct answers to the questions people are asking, but they are all the answers that should be needed to keep him heavily involved in every single match. And I don’t think it should take a good day in training to prove that.

Nicolas Pepe is a superstar, but we have to let him be. Get out of his way and let him do his thing.