Nicolas Pepe is Arsenal’s record signing. That will almost certainly not change any time soon, indeed his £72million fee may eventually come to be viewed as one of the gaudy reminders of football’s final days of excess if the coronavirus pandemic prompts more lasting changes to the industry.
Arsenal took a gamble on Pepe, favouring the younger model over the wishes of their then-head coach Unai Emery. The Spaniard publicly confirmed earlier this month what was widely known at the time, that he wanted to sign Wilfried Zaha instead.
Raul Sanllehi weighed the two options and went for the unproven model with potential upside over the Premier League winger. Pepe would be the club’s record signing.
So far he has not, to many eyes, played like one.
Former Arsenal striker Jeremie Aliadiere laid out the view of many Pepe critics, telling Goal: "What I’m seeing is the most expensive player in Arsenal’s history and even if you don’t want to think about the money, the fact is that money is, unfortunately, a big thing in football.
"And when you spend that much money on a player, you expect more goals and you expect more assists.”
Pepe has six goals and eight assists in 32 games, an eminently credible return for a normal Premier League player. But then £72million does not get you normal. Surely then Aliadiere and numerous other critics of the Ivorian are entitled to question whether Arsenal got value for money with the sizeable sum they committed to paying Lille over the next five years?
Indeed they are, but only to an extent. Arsenal’s signing of Pepe appeared herald a new dawn for the transfer window, one that may not yet rise.
The truth is that Sanllehi sanctioned the deal for Pepe knowing that Arsenal would not see the best of him in the months after his signing. Every player needs an adaptation period, those arriving in a new country after a summer international tournament (the Africa Cup of Nations in this case) even more so.
Arsenal invested in Pepe not because of his output in year one but in years two, three and four. They were paying for potential, some of which had been realised in his final season at Lille.
The realities of the modern market is that potential does not come as cheap as it once did, that clubs prize their youth assets far more than they once did. Prices reflect that and last summer’s market saw 20-year-old Eder Militao net Porto £43million from Real Madrid after one season before Luka Jovic, a year older than his new team-mate, arrived at the Santiago Bernabeu for £54million.
The same was true across Europe. Frenkie De Jong, Tanguy Ndombele, Matthijs de Ligt: all £50million-plus players whose resumes were not exactly extensive, whose best years were likely to not be their first with their new club.
What was required, last summer, was a reassessment of what such sizeable fees bought you. Even a few years ago Arsenal were breaking their club record for Mesut Ozil, Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, the finished article.
The market has changed so radically in recent weeks that the idea of spending £72million on someone who was not the complete package may seem bizarre for years to come. But Pepe’s signing was reflective of how clubs across Europe were planning their investments in the summer of 2019, prioritising youthful promise over more known quantities. That comes with its risks.
Several of those major summer signings listed above have endured debut campaigns to forget, perhaps even more frustrating than Pepe. Tottenham would say the same thing about Ndombele, Real Madrid about Jovic, that Arsenal have always been saying about their record signing. Give him time.
Even when they were signing Pepe, the sort of moment when there is usually a rush of excitement over what supporters can immediately expect, Arsenal were privately keen to ease expectations. They were insistent that Pepe was a signing for their future as much as their present.
There are questions to be asked over such an approach. Weeks after Josh Kroenke was preaching caution over club finances - Arsenal were and likely will be next season “a Europa League club with a Champions League wage bill” - they were making an unprecedented investment on a player that they did not think was going to provide the X-factor for them this season.
The question is whether Pepe will next season or the year after. There were encouraging signs under Arteta. No longer was the Ivorian continually running down blind alleys, whilst his goal and assist output remained broadly unchanged even though he was seeing far less of the ball.
Arsenal knew they weren’t getting the finished product with Pepe, that there were significant holes in his game that needed to be improved. Some are glaringly obvious. Before the coronavirus brought the Premier League to an early pause Arteta effectively acknowledged that his employers had paid £72million for a player who could scarcely be trusted with his right foot, who needed to be taught how full-backs work through a string of drills where his head coach is attacking him.
"It's part of his development, he needs to open more doors to be more unpredictable for the opponent and give more options as well offensively to us," Arteta said.
"He's working on it, he will improve, he will get better. He's got the talent, an immense quality and he's willing to do it."
It was easy to scoff at the revelation that Arsenal had just spent more than they ever had before on a player with such glaring holes in his game. But equally that player, for all his limitations, is the club’s leading provider of Premier League assists this season and has a goal tally in that competition bettered only by Lacazette and Aubameyang.
If Arsenal are right and the best of Pepe is yet to come then the £72million may soon look to be a shrewd investment.
