Nicolas Pepe hasn’t had the best of starts to his career in England and has suffered to adapt to the English way of football like many big names have initially but Arsenal head coach Mikel Arteta is firm that the Gunners faithful will start watching the best of Nico soon – but admits that the Ivory Coast man needs to start putting in some consistency to his performances.
Nicolas has netted five in twenty-seven appearances for the Gunners, of which only two have come from an open play.
Mikel admits that huge chunk of fees paid for acquisition of Nicolas Pepe has so been a cause to make it difficult to settle into life in England. Possibly it won’t take long now and Nico will start showing up on what Gunners saw in him.
“I hope we can see it from now to the end of the season,” said Arteta.
“But if you go through the list of top players that have come to this country, how disappointing they were for the first ten to 12 months then how incredible they were for the next five years, I think we could have a massive list.
“It’s not easy to adapt to this league but he’s putting in the effort and he’s willing to do it. And it will come out.”
Arteta further added speaking : “The price that we paid for him puts him in a difficult position straight away because he’s going to be compared to players of that calibre.
“First of all the team has to sustain his ability and give him as many opportunities as possible during games for him to be able to execute his qualities.
“The other thing is he has his own responsibility, that’s for sure. He has to be more consistent in his performances.”
Arsenal host Newcastle today and with Gabriel Martinelli expected to start once again, Nicolas Pepe may have to find place on bench once again. While young Gabriel has flourished to his early life in London, Pepe has been struggling to replicate his bows in France where he scored 22 goals for Lille last season.
Though Arsenal faithful have seen flashes of his excellence with his superb solo goal against West Ham & the off-the-bench cameo against Vitoria in the Europa League where he scored two superb free-kicks to earn Arsenal a dramatic late 3-2 win.
“That’s part of the adaptation for sure,” Arsenal’s head coach continued.
“He was in France and was one of the biggest stars in the league.
“He made an incredible year, then he comes here and a lot of people didn’t even know him and you paid that price tag.
“So for him to put his brain into this picture and solve all this is not easy. And he’s a really young player.”
