Nicolas Pepe has recently found himself warming the bench for Arsenal, but Football.London‘s Bailey Keogh believes it is Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang who is at fault.
The Gunners started the term in terrible form, losing to each of Brentford, Chelsea and Manchester City without finding a single goal in that time, before earning consecutive 1-0 victories over Norwich and Burnley.
While Pepe started all of those five that he was available for(missed the loss to Man City due to illness), he is only credited with a single assist this term, with no goals as of yet, and has since found himself dropped to the bench.
He is now expected to struggle to break into the team ahead of the current crop of Martin Odegaard, Emile Smith Rowe and Bukayo Saka, while Eddie Nketiah, Gabriel Martinelli, Folarin Balogun and Alexandre Lacazette will also be hoping to challenge for places also.
Keogh insists that Pepe’s demotion to the bench was unfair however, and down to the struggles of his team-mates, with his chance creation statistic showing the team’s lack of goals to be others fault.
The report goes as far as to name Aubameyang’s struggles in front of goal as the reason why the Ivory Coast international has now lost his place in the team, with our second-most creative player Saka needing 40% more time on the field statistically to create each chance.
Do you believe that Pepe deserves more playing time to prove his worth to the team?
Patrick
or it’s because our manager’s somewhat misguided infatuation with Ode has led to the shoehorning of ESR out wide
or his fear-induced obsession with constantly deploying the predominantly negative and counter-intuitive possession-based 4-2-3-1 means that a player of Pepe’s ilk is largely expendable, from a tactical standpoint…when you’re a bang average defensive player, who constantly faces double-teams with the ball at his feet because we don’t dedicate enough players in the final third or make the necessary overlapping runs, the chances to impress are few and far between
or I guess it could be that whole blame Auba nonsense
Our squad is too big for a team that is not in Europe. Too many players for few opportunities. Some players will miss out. It’s unfortunate for the player and the club, players that don’t play lose value.
Aha the classic blame another player for another player’s lack of end product.
This one has always been a classic with Arsenal fans.
So how come Saka isn’t struggling on the RW with Auba and Co?
Y’all ever just stop to think before spewing trash?
We all know Pepe’s abilities but it has been his inability to put them to good use that keeps leaving him on the bench.
If he wants to play, when he gets the chance, let him make sure Saka doesn’t walk back into the team.
Going by this stupid logic, Lacazette, Giroud and others are to be blamed for those seasons Ozil preformed poorly when he could do better?
This isn’t me bringing Ozil as a topic of discussion.
My point is we all know Pepe can do better, the manager knows he can better, and until he starts doing better than the kid who took his spot I say sit him on the bench let the kid continue what he does best
Eddie the truth is yes we all know Pepe ability but the coach tactics is not helping any of our forward players. Even up till now I still don’t know Arteta preferred formation and I’m sure I’m not alone in this. Ever since Arteta has become our coach our forward players have struggled, we all know Auba strength, we know Lacazette strength, Auba is not a forward that can do hold up play but he still find ways to score but this days he look like an average striker and we all know Auba is world class, martinelli was performing very well under Emery but boom he’s become an average player, the only area we seem to improve is the defence. Apart from the spurs match, I can’t remember any match under Arteta that we create 5 clear chances for our strikers, this is not good enough, we have a team that should easily compete for the top4, but without our strikers scoring we won’t even be in the top6. The coach must find a way to make our forward click or else we will miss Europe again next season.
The description of “World Class” is applied to many current players without being justified.At some stage in his career, Auba may just have warranted that esteem, but sadly, that no longer is the case, regardless of who his Manager is.While he is not entirely a spent force, his performances this season have been poor to the extent where he should not be an automatic first pick regardless of his Captain status.
Lenohappy we frequently say it’s Arteta’s fault it’s Arteta’s fault, but have you considered the fact that okay maybe just maybe the players are not durable enough to do what he wants even though they’re doing half of the job very effectively? The fact that they’ve been half of the job effectively means himself alongside the team needs to come up with new ways to bring up the other half?
Liverpool, City, Madrid all play and are very solid defensively too, the only thing is they are effective on the attack too. Is it down to the players abilities fused with manager’s tactics or just the Manager’s tactics alone?
You guys keep talking about it this way as though it’s a terrible thing that we’ve become solid defensively because it’s weighing on our attack.
It requires the combination of players and Manager’s tactics but nah you guys prefer to kid yourselves saying we have world class players and it’s the Manager’s tactics alone that’s killing us
Well said Eddie.
Contrary to Pépé,RW is Saka best position! Pepe’s is LW which he cannot play due to the fact that MA hasn’t had the courage to drop Auba, simple as that.
All the attacking players numbers are down; goals, assists etc… It’s not just Pepe, Auba goal tally has shrunk, Laca’s is down, Martinelli are down compared to under Emery.
Arteta’s defensive tactics have hurt our attack, there is little doubt to that. His improvement of the defense has been at the expense of the offense. And we see attacking players numbers are down.
nice common sense response Durand, considering the apologist nonsense above
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How many games have we played?Are you comparing like with like?In any event the failure of certain players must be down to Arteta ?It just could not have anything to do with the guys on the pitch? No, no .They are only paid a fortune to perform, but the fact that they are not is immaterial.It is evidently down to the Manager.Your obsessions are becoming so tedious ,predictable and pitiful that I cannot believe intelligent people, like you, cannot consider that the players themselves are letting us down.
Yes he is good enough to start more games