Pepe – Use or lose? by Dan Smith
It’s been leaked that Arsenal would be willing to rip up Nicolas Pepe’s contract if they can’t get a transfer offer.
Whoever has shared this information is being harmful, and at the very least is costing the club money.
Why would any interested parties submit a bid, when they know the Gunners will eventually pay the player to leave so they can reduce their wage bill?
8 goals and 1 assist don’t seem enough to have convinced Nice to make our loan agreement a permanent one.
Mikel Arteta has proven countless times he won’t be motivated by the fear of losing value on an individual, if he feels a talent doesn’t suit his ethos, he will wash his hands of them.
The loan to Ligue one was not set up for Pepe to prove anyone wrong, it was simply a way to get help to pay his salary.
I think the 28-year-old would be a better option off the bench then a Reiss Nelson, and even if the club pretended they were willing to consider that option, it increases the amount we might receive.
Given our history of cancelling contracts it’s kind of showing others our cards.
Whether our manager should be allowed to just wash his hands of our record signing is another debate?
Trying to avoid paying him his final year wages isn’t a one-off at the Emirates. Ozil, Sokratis, Kolasinac, Mustafi, Bellerin, Willian and Aubameyang all negotiated deals being cancelled once they were frozen out.
Guendouzi, Torreira, Mari and Maitland Niles were all loaned out because of our rush to save money.
If you could cite this down to one person’s bad attitude, that can happen, but we can almost field an entire 11 released or sold at a cut price.
I understand that Josh Kroenke, Arteta, Edu and the BFG sat down and reviewed all areas of the club, and clearly previous regimes made errors in terms of recruitment.
It’s noble that our owners are essentially willing to write off money, take the hit, and essentially give up on those who don’t meet their managers principles. You can’t back a manager more than that?
Yet have we taken this too far?
Have we allowed Arteta to think that this is standard practice? When in reality one of his jobs should be to get the best out of the resources he has at his disposal?
If we use Pepe as an example, if he had been an impact sub last year in North London would his value now be higher?
With 12 months left on his deal, couldn’t his pace be our plan B instead of just giving him away.
Arsenal seem to not care about a transfer fee for Pepe, they just seem to want to avoid having to carry on paying him 140,000 pound a week.
Do you agree Gooners?
Or should we be trying get the best out of him and train him to be better?
Dan