According to the Evening Standard, Arsenal’s marquee summer signing has admitted that the team need to ‘wake up quickly’ in order to turn around their fortunes after a dismal run of form.
The Gunners have won just one game of their last 12 across all competitions, the north London outfit now sit 10th in the Premier League and hopes for a serious challenge for a top four spot look to be over.
Pepe has so far struggled to really prove his mammoth price-tag, although how much of the ace’s slow start is down to the team’s woes this season?
As per BBC Sport, the north London outfit parted with a club-record fee of £72m to sign the Ivorian from French outfit Lille.
Here’s what Pepe had to say on his side’s disappointing form:
“Us players have to do better quickly. We have won only one game out of the last 12 [in all competitions]. It is not enough, we are Arsenal.”
“It is about us, not the coach or anything else. We have to wake up quickly, starting against Everton.”
Read More: Jermaine Jenas has slammed the Arsenal board for lacking ‘direction’.
Pepe has been phenomenal for us in the Europa League but his performances in the Premier League have left a lot to be desired for.
The 24-year-old forward has two goals and three assists in 15 top-flight outings this season. Hopefully the ace has now settled in and we can expect an uplift in the forward’s form in the second-half of the season.
With Pepe now issuing a wake-up call to his teammates, it will be interesting to see if the Gunners improve their performances over the hectic Christmas and new year period.
With games coming thick and fast over this time, there’s plenty of points up for grabs – giving the team the chance to get their season back on track.
It’s Pepe who needs to wake up and stop his backpasses galore. His consistency, skills and maturity are below Martinelli’s, despite both being inverted wingers
I’d prefer Nelson to start ahead of Pepe on the right side, if Pepe is still too fixated on his left leg. Pepe seems to play better as a substitute, when the opponents are tired
You have to wake up quick?
I did not know that this lot of our so called squad have been sleeping all along?
The season started in August/September but Pepe is trying to tell us that the whole squad has been sleeping?
No wonder it is a jok squad.
Smh
Pepes been sleeping since he got here…
Pepe is not worth 70m.
The same for Lacazette and Auba. These 50,60,70, mill players
should all score 20 PL games minimum every season.
Otherwise we might just as well buy 7mill players like Martinelli and use
our own youth players Mketiah ESR Saka and save mega millions.
We spent 70m on Pepe ignoring the real area of concern DM and CB.
Liverpool spent 70m on VVD and what a transformation CL and now PL.
Why is our club so dumb when it comes to transfers?
Sanllehi and Venkatsham should have been sacked months ago.
Now they are bringing in a head coach with no head coach experience!!!
If we want to know how good Arteta is he should have to use the same squad
till the end of the season If he fails to make top 4 sack him.
If we suddenly bring in DM and CB reinforcements by selling Mustafi and Torreira
then it will prove that it is not a manager/Coaching problem at all
it will prove that transfers are the problem.
We should have sacked Sanllehi and Venkatsham and given Freddie the right players.
Sanllehi and Venkatsham totally incompetent tools…just go
a 70 m attacker when we needed a two quality DM and two quality DM’s.
Mustafi +Xhaka + Ozil and Mkhitarian should have been ditched last summer.
Unai and Freddie were shafted by Sanllehi and Venkatsham.
If we want to know how good Arteta is we should NOT make any signings in Jan.
Let him have the same squad as Emery and Ljunberg had.
If he gets top 4 by May he stays if not sack him.
seems like a pretty steep price to pay to prove a point. Personally, I would like us to win, not take a gamble on seeing who is worse.
I do not disagree with you about the quality of the front office though. We have had more than a few years of very poor front office work and it does explain a lot.
and I know that you would rather win as well agu 🙂
I doubt that is the correct price being quoted for Pepe, they wanted to please fans with a big purchase, so they totted up all the agent fees and so on and gave the full price on the package. I’d say somewhere between 45m to about 55m is the genuine number, the going rate in France for a high profile potentially astute signing. Liv and City usually pay a certain amount to get their man from France or Germany, I don’t see why we’d need to go higher with him having only one season behind him.