Thierry Henry calls for Nicolas Pepe to be given more time.
Nicolas Pepe has not had the best of starts to his Arsenal career but has received support from former Arsenal legend, Thierry Henry.
Pepe signed for a club-record £72m but has not yet quite lived up to such a large transfer fee. However, Henry feels that the amount of money paid for the Ivory Coast star should be ignored.
“People need to forget about the price tag. He didn’t ask to be bought for that amount of money himself, Henry said as reported in the Evening Standard.
“It’s not always easy to arrive in a team, adapt to a new style of play.
“The Premier League, as we know, is not the same as the French League or any other league, by the way. So he needs to adapt to that. We need to give him time.”
So, is Henry right in his viewpoint?
My opinion is that Henry does have a point, sort of. It does seem difficult to read almost any article about Pepe without his fee being mentioned.
But at the same time if you pay out that sort of money you can be forgiven for expecting a certain level of performance in return.
It is never easy to adapt to a new league, especially the Premier League. But many players do it with much lesser talent.
Confidence appears low among the players and it could easily be the case that the 24-year-old is one of those struggling but there is only so much time the fans will give any player that is underperforming.
The feeling I get from the fans is that they will be patient for a while longer but there is frustration for sure.
Once this international break is over hopefully we will see an improvement in Pepe’s form. That is surely the hope of all genuine Arsenal fans. However, the media will not be so patient and Pepe has to know that.