Ex Arsenal player Charlie Nicholas has not been impressed with Nicolas Pepe’s start in the Premier League.
When making his Europa League predictions for Sky Sports, Nicholas branded Arsenal’s record signing “dreadful” in their 2-2 draw at Watford last Sunday.
He didn’t stop there though, the Soccer Saturday pundit went on to insinuate Pepe had a negative impact on the preformances of some of the club’s younger players.
Nicolas Pepe was dreadful against Watford. How Emery took Mesut Ozil and Dani Ceballos off ahead of him was beyond me. It is starting to effect Ainsley Maitland-Niles and some of the other young players. Reiss Nelson and Joe Willock came on and could not keep the ball.
These are strong words indeed from Nicholas, but is he being harsh?
Read Arsenal verdict
Expectations of Pepe were very high heading into the season after his incredible season in Ligue 1, where he scored 22 goals and created another 11 – stats he hasn’t looked like replicating so far this season.
After watching Arsenal’s opening fixtures, the potential with Pepe is evident. His pace and dribbling ability has left defenders in his wake, and his intention to drive forward with quality is a refreshing sight to fans.
While he hasn’t achieved much so far, we are still very early in the season, so he needs more time. Pepe certainly doesn’t deserve to be written off or blamed for the performance of others, because that cannot be proven, maybe Maitland-Niles, Reiss Nelson and Joe Willock were just poor on the day.
The £72 million player needs at least a few more months of Premier League football under his belt before his ability can be questioned.
