Arsenal: Nicolas Pepe isn’t wrong about being superior

Arsenal newbie Nicolas Pepe is undaunted by Premier League defending and… honestly? He has every right to feel superior. The numbers back him up.

Arsenal spent a lot of money to bring in Nicolas Pepe. The assumption, when you break the bank for someone like that, is that you’re going to get someone who doesn’t have a lot of trouble against just about anyone. And, according to Nicolas Pepe himself, he hasn’t.

In a dialogue between him and Matteo Guendouzi, when asked who the toughest defender he’s had to face so far, Pepe answered “nobody.” Guendouzi followed up with “Honestly” and Pepe doubled down by saying “Honestly.”

Of course, opposing fans find this hilarious. They’ve been mocking Pepe all year for various things, but I’m here to tell you that this mockery should fall on deaf ears, since Pepe’s assertion, while brash and impossible to outright prove, isn’t wrong.

In fact, if you stack him up against fellow Premier League minutes who have played a minimum of 1000 minutes, you’ll see that Pepe excels and ranks among the best in the business.

For starters, let’s look at dribbles completed compared to possession lost, since that is primarily what we can numerically judge one-on-one effectiveness by.

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Of qualified wingers, Pepe ranks fourth in the league behind only Adama Traore, Wilfried Zaha and Felipe Anderson. Im going to disqualify Zaha because Zaha loses the ball over twice as much as Pepe. That leaves Traore, who is a living tank, and Felipe Anderson. Pretty exclusive company. Of them, Pepe is right on par with creating chances, with goal production, with retaining possession, with all of it.

You can start factoring in guys like Raheem Sterling or Son Heung-Min, but I’m sorry, they’ve had a hell of a lot longer to settle into the Premier League than Pepe and they’ve had 300+ minutes more than him this year.

That’s the thing. Pepe has every right to be in this confident mindset because when given the chance, he has excelled. The problem hasn’t come in his effectiveness, it’s come from managers not letting him get any sort of consistency in terms of game time.

His five goals and five assists across major competitions land him second on the team. This is a tremendously talented guy who dribbles with the best, creates best among those and has the production to show for it.

So yeah, I don’t think there is a defender that can stop him if he’s on his game.