Surprise Arsenal opening for outcast Nicolas Pepe

Nicolas Pepe has played five minutes of Premier League football for Arsenal across the past seven fixtures. It’s hard to imagine where the next five will come from.

Finishing last season as arguably Arsenal’s best player with five goals in final three league outings, at last it felt like all the flirts with being a quality footballer would be realised with a long-term relationship in the first team.

Bukayo Saka and Emile Smith Rowe are the wide players considered undroppable, but it was hard to overlook the exploits of the club’s record signing as he gradually picked up his form across 2021.

Carry that over into pre-season where he looked sharp, hungry and in good physical condition, even in the dreadful 2-0 opening day defeat to Brentford there were some positive signs from the Ivorian. The following loss to Chelsea was miserable, but he was far from the worst player on the pitch.

Nicolas Pepe could be handed a surprise opening at Arsenal with Mikel Arteta making his feelings known on the outcast forward

And yet, 15 matches into the season, he has started only five games.

Only his most die hard supporters are looking at the ongoing issues at Arsenal and feeling some poor decisions are being made. Missing plenty from the performances, there is little to suggest that Pepe will fix any of them.

With a face like thunder at Everton as Eddie Nketiah was selected ahead of him to come on at left-winger when chasing a winner, the fact he wasn’t even asked to warm up speaks volumes of where he stands in Mikel Arteta’s thinking.

His career in north London looks well and truly over. Successive games where the Gunners have been searching for a goal he’s been left to watch on from the bench in favour of others with futures that may be elsewhere as soon as January. That’s a bad look for him. Whatever he’s contributing in training is far from the accepted standard.

Again, there are not any great qualms over that, even if he is painfully imperfect and one of few forwards in the squad who offers genuine goal threat regardless of how poor other aspects of his game may be.

You also wonder what the point was in bringing him up to the north west. It was clear at Old Trafford and Goodison Park that Arteta had no intention of subbing him on, even if in both instances the game state was the most ideal one for him to be considered.

Yet, with Southampton to come in the Premier League on Saturday, the situation may call for him to make a rare outing.

Continued on next page…

Will Nicolas Pepe Get a Chance vs Southampton?

Watching Gabriel Martinelli hobble off with a hamstring injury in the 2-1 defeat was a crushing blow for all involved. On the player’s part, he’d been handed back-to-back starts in the league, looking excellent at Old Trafford and doing nothing especially wrong against the Toffees.

For Arsenal, they will need all their firepower fit and firing with goals hard to come by all season. Arteta said after the game that he was ‘not positive’ about Martinelli’s situation.

Add to that some uncertainty around Emile Smith Rowe and the groin problem that kept him out of Monday’s squad, and a surprise door creeks open for Pepe to stake a claim for a place in the team when it was felt he couldn’t be further away from the team.

Whether a spot on the wings becomes available to him or not, Arsenal will either be left with a player sulking and disheartened, or with a fire in his belly to take his chance. His lack of involvement over recent weeks and his attitude in the Crystal Palace draw – his most recent start – suggests more of the former.

Given how Arteta has favoured Nketiah over the past two matches there is even less confidence that Pepe can suddenly wrestle favour in the manager’s eyes and get himself in a position to feature. When a 22-year-old striker is selected ahead of you on the wing when the team needs goals there is really no conceivable way back for you.

Which means Arteta needs to make a choice. Having him on the bench over the likes of Ainsley Maitland-Niles when it doesn’t remotely look like Pepe is going to be anything other than a bench warmer provides the team with little use.

Arteta has shrugged off the suggestions of selling Pepe in January but it would be remarkable if it wasn’t an absolute consideration. If anything even vaguely acceptable comes in then surely he’s eyeing moving him on. It’s not like he’ll be around in January anyway, and Pepe can’t even make the starting lineup for his national team.

Southampton poses his best realistic chance for minutes. But even with injuries offering a glimmer of hope for him it looks as if Arteta’s gauntlet has been laid down.