Former Arsenal winger ,Nicolas Pepe’s career has taken a disappointing turn after it has been revealed that the winger is currently without a club, just five years after his mega £72 million move to Arsenal from Lille.

At one time, the 29-year-old looked like an extremely promising talent. Through his form for the Ligue 1 club between 2017 and 2019, he caught the attention of big clubs across the world.

Pepe scored 37 times in 80 games for Lille, and this convinced the Gunners to splash an eye-watering amount of cash on securing his services during the summer of 2019.

Things went south from there, and the Ivory Coast international never came close to replicating the form he’d displayed in Ligue 1 at the Emirates.

 Speaking to French publication L’Equipe, per journalist Matt Spiro, the 29-year-old said the negativity ‘bordered on bullying’.

“People don’t realise how it can affect you mentally, your family, your performances. I suffered a kind of trauma at Arsenal… like my passion was taken from me. How could (the critics) be so relentless? I was even being called the biggest flop in Premier League history!” Said Pepe.

Having spent over £70 million on Pepe, Arsenal will have been hoping they’d locked down a star on the wing for the foreseeable future.

That’s not quite how things played out, though, and after just three years in the first team, he was loaned out to OGC Nice. He was allowed to leave on a free transfer a year later, bringing his time in north London to a premature end.

Across three seasons in the Arsenal first-team, Pepe played 112 times for the club, and actually recorded 48 goal contributions in that time, so to label him the biggest flop in Premier League history is harsh. Still, for the money spent, things could have certainly gone a little better for both parties.

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