£72m Arsenal flop lifts lid on ‘tense’ relationship with Mikel Arteta

Nicolas Pepe has opened up connected his ‘tense and frustrating’ narration with Mikel Arteta during his ill-fated spell astatine Arsenal.

Unai Emery made Pepe Arsenal’s grounds signing successful 2019, buying him from Lille for £72million.

Having been a prolific goal-scorer and creator successful France, it was thought that the winger would occurrence the Gunners backmost to glory.

He made an good start, notably scoring successful Arteta’s archetypal triumph arsenic manager and lifting the FA Cup successful his archetypal season, earlier hitting treble figures successful the Premier League successful his sophomore campaign.

But the Ivory Coast planetary yet failed to unrecorded up to his terms tag and it soon became wide helium did not suit Arteta’s tactics, with his declaration yet terminated successful 2023.

Asked astir his clip nether the Arsenal manager successful an interrogation with The Athletic, Pepe, who present plays for Villarreal, gave a telling answer.

‘With Arteta, it wasn’t… well, it was bully astatine the start,’ the 29-year-old said, indicating things were not large betwixt the pair.

‘After that, the assurance wasn’t truly there. I got little and little crippled time, truthful determination was immoderate frustration.

‘I’m not idiosyncratic who likes being connected the seat each week without justification oregon explanation. So yeah, that’s thing that created immoderate tension.’

Pepe ended his Arsenal vocation with 27 goals and 21 assists successful 112 appearances and insists helium has ‘good memories’ from the Emirates.

But helium added that his grounds transfer, which has since been surpassed by Declan Rice, was a load and pb to overly harsh criticism, particularly from fans.

‘It was terrible and unjust. I saw a batch of nasty comments. When you spot what radical deliberation of you, it affects you and your family, whether you similar it oregon not.

‘I was young; it was the archetypal clip I had near France to play abroad. I had to accommodate successful tons of ways, but radical don’t spot that. They lone spot what happens connected the pitch.

‘Automatically, the archetypal subordinate to beryllium criticised is the 1 that outgo a batch of money. You person to beryllium getting goals and assists, goals and assists.

‘People expected 30, 35, 40 goals a season. But it was lone [Lionel] Messi and [Cristiano] Ronaldo who did that. Arsenal spent a batch of wealth connected maine and I paid the terms for it.’

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