Arsenal ready to terminate Pepe’s contract as Arteta gets brutal

Arsenal are reportedly planning to terminate Nicolas Pepe’s contract if they are unable to secure a move for him this summer. The Ivory Coast international cost the Gunners £72million back in 2019 from Lille and has failed to make up for his price tag.

The 28 year-old has been deemed surplus to requirements at the Emirates this summer and according to the Mirror, the north Londoners are so desperate to get him off their books that they are prepared to buy out his deal. Pepe has one more year remaining on his £140,000-a-week contract and Arsenal are struggling to offload him.

A mixture of high wage expectations and poor form have turned off many potential suitors. The only logical move appears to be Saudi Arabia, however, reports from CBS claim Pepe had a £4m-a-year package including significant bonuses recently fall through with an unnamed Saudi Pro League side.

The report doesn’t go on to suggest why the deal collapsed, just that the team have “moved on to other targets”. Pepe now finds himself in a state of limbo.

He was not included in Arsena’s squad for their pre-season tour of the United States and it was thought that he may have been close to completing a move elsewhere. But Arteta confirmed that his absence was simply due to a nagging injury picked up during his loan spell at Nice.

“At the moment he is recovering from an injury which is why he’s not here,” he said. “He had a spell on loan and obviously we wanted to get much more than we got from that loan spell. We have to see when we come back, understand what the plans are and make the right decision for him.”

Pepe has been branded as the club’s ‘worst-ever signing’ by fans on several occasions on social media. The winger never lived up to his huge price and scored just 27 goals and registered 21 assists in 112 appearances for the club.

Amid uncertainty surrounding his future, Pepe sat down with Colininterview to talk about his relationship with the Arsenal boss. “People say that he identified me as a player that wasn’t up to the level in his team, in his philosophy. It’s completely false,” he said.

“When he arrived, he had [Manchester] City’s philosophy. He had a squad that was filled with quality and backups in every position. When he spoke to me, he said he counted on me, he wanted me to do this or that, and you have to focus on that. He improved me in every way. He spoke to me the whole time, I watched videos with his assistants all the time. He really believed in me. He said I had incredible potential, so we need to extract that potential.

He added: “The second season comes along, I was a substitute. I was going mad. How could I be a substitute when he said he counted on me? Everything is spinning in your head.”