Kevin Campbell has claimed that Nicolas Pepe is going backwards at Arsenal despite Mikel Arteta’s best efforts.
The 26-year-old is Arsenal’s most expensive player of all time following a £72 million arrival from Lille over two years ago.
But 15 goals and eight assists from 65 Premier League appearances illustrates that he hasn’t exactly been tearing things up in North London since joining.
This season, Arteta has benched him for the Gunners’ last three Premier League games because the Ivorian’s form hasn’t been in keeping with the sort of performances he showed toward the end of last season.
And former Arsenal hitman Campbell has claimed that the player just hasn’t kicked on, adding that he’s actually getting worse.
He told The Highbury Squad podcast: “When the manager works with you and you make that jump, he’s not expecting you to take steps backwards. He’s expecting you to take steps forward this season and it doesn’t look like he’s taking steps forward. It looks like he’s regressing a little bit.”
Arteta has long lambasted Pepe’s consistency – or lack of – and that’s the one thing stopping him from really becoming a huge player at the Emirates.
He has everything from speed, power and lord knows trickery, but combining all three on a regular basis is something that he struggles to do in a major way.
Tonight against Brighton he was given 25 minutes to make a difference, replacing Martin Odegaard in the 0-0 draw at the Amex, but he struggled in a serious way again and it’s hard to see him ever being Mr Reliable.
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