Côte d’Ivoire international Nicolas Pepe has said he was expected to score in every games by Arsenal fans because of the huge transfer fee he was bought for.
Pepe became Arsenal’s club-record signing under Unai Emery in the summer of 2019, as the winger joined from Ligue 1 club Lille in £72million transfer deal
Pepe, who’s now a free agent, was signed by Arsenal after a stellar campaign with Lille in the French top flight.
But he failed to live up to expectations under both Emery and his successor, Mikel Arteta.
“It wasn’t easy at all. And the fans weren’t happy with how I was performing,” Pepe, 29, told BBC Sport in an interview. “When I first joined, the fans weren’t really judging my performances, they were judging the price tag.
“But I think I did some great things while at Arsenal. I don’t regret my time there. But my transfer fee to the club was the highest one they’d signed, so they expected me to score in each match.“
In another recent interview, this time with French newspaper L’Equipe, Pepe said of the criticism: “It was almost harassment. I don’t look at social media much, but if my brother told me ‘this is what they said about you’, it would affect me unconsciously.
“It also came from the media or from certain members of the club. They don’t realise that it can affect the mental state, the family and it affects performance. The only people who have always supported me are the Arsenal fans. At Arsenal, I suffered a kind of trauma, as if my passion had been ripped away from me, I had a disgust for football.
“I doubted myself to the point that I thought about quitting everything. I wondered how they could have been so relentless in their attacks on me. They even called me the biggest flop in the history of the Premier League. But I refused to mope.”
Pepe’s spell with Trabzonspor was plagued by injury problems, as was his loan at Nice in the 2022-23 season.
Now ready for a fresh challenge, he added: “We listen to all offers, and then it’s my representatives who’ll let me know a club’s real intentions, and if it’s not a serious offer, I don’t hear about it. Let’s see what happens. But I’m not ruling out a return to England.”
