Arsenal's club-record signing Nicolas Pepe has struggled to hit the heights since joining the north London club in 2019 for £72million under Unai Emery. The 27-year-old made just 23 appearances across all competitions last campaign, dropping to the bench in favour of youngster Bukayo Saka.
Then came the summer, where a huge squad turnover saw plenty of new players join while others left, including Pepe on a season-long loan to French side OGC Nice. “We decided for every party it was the best decision to allow him to go," Mikel Arteta said on the decision to let him leave. "He needs to play minutes, he needs to play football. He was really adamant to do that and we decided that it would be best for everybody to do it.
“He needed minutes, he has been craving minutes and talking to me a lot about that, I couldn’t guarantee that right now, what he was looking for. At some stage, if you extend that period for too long then frustration comes in and the level of performance won’t get to what we want and we decided that was the best thing to do for all parties.”
