Arsenal: I am so incredibly sick of hearing about Wilfried Zaha

Arsenal can’t seem to free themselves from talk of Wilfried Zaha and I, for one, am so entirely sick and tired of hearing his name.

Sometimes there are Arsenal transfer rumors that linger for so long that I start to despite the player at no fault of his own. It happened with Edinson Cavani. It happened with Karim Benzema (though he’s a villain now for other reasons) and now it’s happening (or already happened, really) with Wilfried Zaha.

I don’t understand the fascination with Wilfried Zaha. I really don’t. Sure, he’s a good player who’s stuck at Crystal Palace and that’s a bummer. But he’s 27-years-old now, he’s still hovering around the same goal production and, meanwhile, Nicolas Pepe has shown us a near-limitless ceiling and he’s only 25.

Of course, the “experts” out there never miss an opportunity to say that the Gunners would have been better off with Zaha than Pepe, but it’s talk like that that leads me to despise all connection between Zaha and Arsenal, even if it’s just Zaha talking about how Arsenal was, in fact, after him.

Arsenal doesn’t care about Wilfried Zaha

Here’s the thing. Zaha’s best-ever season was 2016/17 when he scored seven goals and added nine assists. That was in 3,025 minutes of play, which equates to a goal contribution every 189 minutes.

This year? Zaha is having his worst year ever.

Meanwhile, don’t mind Nicolas Pepe contributing a goal every 135 minutes in his first year ever in the Premier League. In a year that he is falling under intense scrutiny. In a year that he has been dubbed a failure.

All that and he’s still doing better than Zaha in his best year.

Sure, you can make the case that you can only make the most of what you’re given and Zaha has been stuck at Palace. But Lille aren’t exactly a Ligue 1 powerhouse and Pepe managed 33 goal contributions there in his final year. Which also qualifies as making the most of what you’re given.

If there is anyone out there that still believes that we should have signed Zaha over Pepe, I have news for you—you’re dead wrong. And every day that goes by, you’re being proven even more wrong. So just step away from your wrongness and join the Pepe brigade. We’re friendly over here.

Seriously though, can we let the Zaha nonsense go? We did better. So much better. And it’s only going to get even better.