Arteta’s next big Arsenal challenge is Nicolas Pepe

As the Arsenal squad distanced themselves from the Premier League for a week and half with some warm weather training in Dubai, the fanbase sat frantically refreshing their online feeds.

Waiting for the elusive tweet from an established journalist that they’d activated Alexander Isak’s release clause or unearthed the next 2011/12 Robin van Persie on a club record deal, neither would arrive.

All the while Nicolas Pepe saw his AFCON dream brought to an end on penalties before linking up with his club teammates over in the Middle East. Someone long forgotten about across the month of January, his exodus from the Arsenal team has been ongoing for much longer.

A full three and a half months since he started a Premier League game for Arsenal, there are no supporters who can honestly, in their heart of hearts, say they’ve missed him. That isn’t so much a slight on him, and more heavily based on Bukayo Saka’s continued excellence.

Mikel Arteta’s next big Arsenal challenge is Nicolas Pepe and finding a way to use the Ivorian in the absence of centre-forwards with goal threat

Such has been his form that the Ivorian has been left as an afterthought.

In many ways he still is. If the remaining 17 matches of the season run smoothly – they won’t – then Saka will play every single minute out on that right side.

But Pepe still has a role to play. In fact, he has a huge role to play between now and the end of the season, because Arsenal will, as much as some may dread to think it, need him.

The scarcity of minutes for Pepe this season don’t require a great deal of context: he is not Arteta’s player, Arteta doesn’t fancy him and Saka is light years ahead of him in almost every department.

He isn’t going to be starting many matches, if any at all should everyone stay fit, but in a squad where the two strikers have only two open play league goals this season between them, getting a tune out of Pepe becomes an interesting and essential challenge for Arteta.

If/when Arsenal are pushing for a crucial late winner/equaliser in a match the natural reaction is to turn to the substitutes. Unlike their top four rivals, Arsenal don’t have this cutting edge to choose from off the bench because all their game changers will be on the pitch. How Arteta now manages Pepe and how he makes him feel is critical to extracting some use out of a player who may already be eyeing his next move in the summer.

Because, as much as he make you want to tear your hair out, he pops up in the final third with those killer moments.

Systematically Arteta has options that could highlight the 26-year-old’s finer traits – sticking Pepe on the left and moving Martinelli centrally, for example – while equally he could be bringing on someone who will slow Arsenal’s play down further and if anything reduce their chances of scoring.

You know what you get with Pepe, but you also don’t. For certain there will never be a clean 90 minutes without anything frustrating of note, yet sometimes his best moments arrive at his lowest ebb. Beyond just matters on the pitch, there is no doubting that Arteta wants, and Arsenal need, to move Pepe on. If there is some hope of clawing back some of the £72m then he needs to not just be playing, but playing well.

Whether it be putting an arm around his shoulder or giving him a kick up the backside to say that he’ll never get a move elsewhere and stink up the bench if he doesn’t improve (not preferable), he has to find a way.