I still have faith in him. He’s one of the few in our squad I wouldn’t want to see out the door.
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Same here…
I believe he could do better… believe, not much to back it up but just believe.
He can’t be this shit, right?
I would try to put him on the left and stop using this wrong footed cut in crap.
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I think it part mentality and partly a skill set that just isn’t suited for what Arteta (stupidly) has turned that position into. Pepe is sort of a low rent Alexis without the superior mentality, a high risk, sharp end of the stick player. His best skills are dribbling, finishing, and playing in space. He isn’t all that good at helping with the buildup, receiving the ball between the lines and progressing it elsewhere, and retaining the ball high up the pitch. That is a fine player profile to have on one wing as long as there is enough creativity, ball progression, and ball movement elsewhere.
Arteta killed Pepe when he killed Ozil and opted not to replace him with another 10. Because that decision to play without a real CAM player meant that the wingers either needed to contribute a lot more in terms of moving and retaining the ball (therefore the logic of replacing Pepe with Willian) or if they were going to play Laca as the 9/10 hybrid then it was always going to be Auba who was preferred as the sharp end of the stick player out wide. You can’t have two of them in that setup: A front line of Auba-Laca-Pepe was never going to work without anybody linking the front line to the rest of the team.
The simple obvious way to set our team up was always with Auba as 9, Pepe as the more attacking oriented winger who ran behind the defense, Saka providing balance on the other side as an all around winger who played more between the lines and did more to progress the ball, and then a 10 who could be real creative fulcrum or twin 8s with real quality in terms of passing and creativity. Arteta tried to get cute instead and he has basically killed all our attacking players in the process.
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If we could I’d rather we cut our losses, would be at a loss obviously but there’s better value elsewhere.
We’re stuck with him though.
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I honestly believe that selling him now would be the wrong approach, the way we are playing the value of our players will never be lower. I think the only really sellable asset we have is Saka. For better or worse Pepe is in the fold now and he’ll be a huge part of any sort of rebuild we do.
I do believe that once we start to play any expansive attacking based football he will begin to shine but I understand at the minute the seems a long way off for people. Regardless I enjoy seeing him in the first 11 more so than the likes of Laca and Willian, and I do think he will have a future here once we get our act together. I can’t say that about too many of players right now.
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Sometimes it’s clear, quite early too, if a player has it or not.
I just don’t think he’s good. Maybe he’d look decent if the club hired Christophe Galtier, who was his coach at Lille, but other than that, I struggle to see how he’ll be able to turn things around.
Clubs shouldn’t spend so much money on players that are difficult to fit into a team.
Look at Chelsea, and see how awful Havertz is, and then look how his former club is doing now. Same with Lille.
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I don’t mind Pepe and think he is a better than he has been able to show, but I don’t believe he is 72 million quid the real deal.
That’s a fee of a truly elite winger and sadly Pepe has too many flaws in his game imo.
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I think a large portion of the money goes to the agent and under table.
No fucking way we should pay 72m.
This is just money laundering.
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Pepe who can’t even do basics at times can never be a real deal.
He may turn out to be a really good player at some point in his career but he will just never be a world class player or anything close to it.
The talent is evident, yes but his attitude, drive and desire is too inferior to ever manifest that talent into a real product
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I haven’t given up on Pepe, but it’s difficult to utilise his best attributes in a slow possession-based team that doesn’t press high up the pitch and/or doesn’t try to counter-attack.
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Even if he could be good, he’s currently useless and probably will be forever if this keeps up.
This is the kind of thing a manager / club should be bold on. Either he’s not your guy and you ship him out at a big loss while you can still show people his outstanding numbers in France, or you give him the arm around the shoulder treatment and tell him how great he is and give him your complete faith and hope that he can deliver some of that goodness.
Just because Raul got mugged for his fee doesn’t change who he is. If he’s a confidence player we have to deal with that. If he’s mentally fragile we have to deal with that too. That’s what managers are meant to do.
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It’s not just Pepe though, Auba, Eddie, Laca, Willian are all having the worst seasons of their careers.
But like @Flexo and I and others have been saying these players will never be able to play in a slow build up possession style game. They don’t really have the attributes, the only way it would work for them would be if they had a creative player feeding them passes. With out that the only other things that would work be fast counter attacking or high intensity pressing at the very top of the pitch (gegenpress style) which is something Arteta doesn’t do or know how to do.
If not we’re just going to continue to see a goal here and there and rubbish the rest of the time.
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Fine… I know a lot of guys don’t like ____ anyway, it was a good decision to bin him.
Why not getting a replacement? Manager’s fault.
Trying Willian and Laca @ #10, another fault.
Not able to see his player’s abilities and strengths and maximize them, fault again.
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In a competition for biggest dud signing with Lacashitter, Xhaka, Mustafi, Willian and the 60m Ozil contract extension.
Can’t put Mari, Sok, Kolasinac, Cech or Soares quite in the same quantum of waste as the above.
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He’s the one player in this squad that I just wanna see smash it and prove everyone wrong lol
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I honestly don’t think he’s flopped and don’t see why people are so hard on him.
He’s gotten some great goals and assists for us, but has just been totally mismanaged by our managers and not been given a chance to shine whatsoever.
Don’t think he’s done much wrong at all apart from the red card and really want to see him kill it.
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Yeah I think the price tag is what will always be used against him but I honestly think there’s so much mitigation for the performances.
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If we had a creative force in midfield, and a real threat on the opposite flank, he would kill it…this way he is always attacking 2 or 3 players and trying to do too much which ends up him losing the ball often.
Also with Auba on the wing and Eddie/ Laca being shit there is no one to convert the crosses to goals.
I still believe there is a world class player in him but Arsenal of today is not the place to thrive
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