The teams at the top of the Premier League remain there by having strength in depth throughout the squad with strong competition for places. Players who aren’t up for the fight do not tend to stick around.
Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta’s former boss and mentor Pep Guardiola once said after reports emerged regarding Raheem Sterling’s uncertain future that the player and any other of his teammates could leave if they were not ‘satisfied’ with the number of minutes they were playing.
“If any of these players are not satisfied, it is so simple,” Guardiola said. “With their agents, [they need to] go to the club and say, 'I am not happy, I want to leave,' and we are going to find a solution. I am pretty sure of that. We want committed and happy people to be here.”
‘Committed’ and ‘happy’ are two words that are difficult to find associated with players that are struggling to get regular game time. At Arsenal, Arteta has this issue with Nicolas Pepe and his performance against League 1 Sunderland in the Carabao Cup quarter-final evidenced this.
After the Gunners took an early lead, a quick turnover of possession in the Black Cat’s half enabled Nathan Broadhead to score after Pepe abandoned the forward with Cedric out of position from the previous attack.
The Ivorian naively rushed out to close down the Sunderland midfield but was quickly passed around to Elliot Embleton who fed Broadhead to chip the ball over Bernd Leno. However, it was the lack of commitment, there’s that buzz word, to chase back to try and recover his error which will have rightly frustrated Arteta.
Arsenal have been linked with Juventus winger Dejan Kulusevski ahead of the January transfer window and it is unsurprisingly different when comparing the pair’s defensive statistics. Both being left-footed right-wingers by trade; the pair are very comparable.
Looking at the two’s league statistics averaged per 90, the Swedish international has been involved in 10.31 defensive duels with a win rate of 52.4% compared to just 5.7 defensive duels for Pepe winning 52.9% of them.
The trend continues when considering recoveries. 67.5% of Kulusevski’s 5.03 recoveries occur in the oppositions half with the Swede pressing his opponents. For Pepe, with the exact same frequency, 43.3% take place in the attacking half of the field.
The difficulty for Arsenal is finding a suitor who will both pay the high wages of the player and a transfer fee that the club would entertain. The £72 million that the Gunners paid Lille for the player will certainly be a factor in how much they demand.
Yet the writing seems on the wall for the player under Mikel Arteta at least and a fresh start elsewhere is likely the better outcome for all parties. Whether his eventual replacement can be more of what the Spaniard wants remains to be seen but the recruitment under his tenure gives cause for encouragement to whoever is targeted.
Make sure you have subscribed to The Arsenal Way! The Fan Brands team along with plenty of your football.london favourites will be producing daily Arsenal content for you to enjoy including match reactions, podcasts, football fun and interviews. You can follow Tom Canton from the TAW team to keep up to date with his work.
