Nicolas Pepe has revealed how a meeting yesterday morning with Mikel Arteta helped inspire his Arsenal performance against Manchester United.
Pepe produced arguably his best performance in a Gunners shirt against Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side at the Emirates, as Arteta claimed his first win as Arsenal boss.
Firing his side ahead after just eight minutes, the former Lille man was a constant threat before being replaced by Reiss Nelson just after the hour mark.
And Pepe believes his performance against United shows he is now ready to become a regular in his side’s starting line-up.
"I had a discussion with the coach this morning and he told me I was going to start and asked if I felt ready and stuff like that,” the Frenchman told RMC cited by the Mirrror.
"I told him I felt ready. I showed tonight that I was ready.
"As well, today it is my mother’s birthday, I score today, so it is only positive for me and the team.”
While the forward also opened up how Arteta's use of video analysis helped his side to overcome United.
"This one feels a lot better. We scored twice, we conceded zero goals. This will really do a lot for everyone’s confidence levels,” he added.
"We are doing a lot, a lot of video during training in order to perform well during the match. Today we performed well, we were solid defensively, we were good going forward.
"It is all new for us. A new system, new instructions. We are adapting quickly.
"That has been seen in the last three matches, even though we did not win, we were very good, we were just missing the victory, which we were able to do tonight. We need to continue like this.
"Now we have to go on a run to get to this top 4 that we need to do."
