Arsenal Smash Their Transfer Record To Sign Nicolas Pepe

It’s been some day to be an Arsenal fan as they broke their transfer record for the third time in two years to sign Nicolas Pepe from Lille. When news of his imminent arrival first broke a few days ago I didn’t dare to believe as I pondered all the obstacles in our way, but my doubts were proven wrong when he signed on the dotted line today. It’s still hard to believe a club with supposedly only £40 million to spend this summer could splash almost twice that amount on one player.

Of course we won’t be paying all of the money up front and we have brought in a little money through sales recently with possibly more sales to follow. Pepe joins Gabriel Martinelli as a permanent fixture in the squad this season while Dani Ceballos is on loan from Real Madrid abd William Saliba has signed for us, but been loaned back to St. Etienne for this season. It doesn’t look like we’re finished either with Kieran Tierney looking likely to join us from Celtic very soon and a mystery central defender lined up too if the rumours are to be believed.

Martinelli definitely looks like one for the future and Ceballos will add a lot to the team for the season that he’s with us, but Pepe is the marquee signing us fans were longing for. He had a fantastic season with Lille last season with 23 goals and 11 assists from a wide role and he’s exactly the type of player we have needed for so long. His ability to take players on and beat them at pace is something we badly need in our team and we need someone else besides Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette to score consistently.

There’s still some work to be done though and we haven’t added anyone to a very dodgy defence. It looks like both Shkodran Mustafi and Laurent Koscielny could be on their way out which would make our need for more defenders crucial. The returns of both Rob Holding and Hector Bellerin will be of real benefit to the team and they can’t come soon enough for me.

We have some incredible attacking talent in the team and our forward line has to be one to be feared by any other team. However, if we don’t sort out our defensive issues we’re probably going to have to score at least three goals in every game if we want to win. A few weeks ago I might have said I had no real faith in the club signing the players we need to strengthen the defence, but it’s hard to argue with the players delivered in recent weeks and I really hope they can keep up the fantastic work.

I think the demise of Mesut Ozil in the last couple of seasons was strongly influenced by the departure of Alexis Sanchez and I hope the dynamism offered by Pepe can bring the best out of Ozil again. With the contract he’s on he’s going nowhere so it’s very important for us to get the maximum return possible from such an important and expensive asset. I, for one, can’t wait to see what our attack is capable of this coming season and we don’t have too long to wait.

I could put up links to various videos showing us exactly what we’re getting with the arrival of Pepe, but there’s no real point as they’re so easy for anyone to find themselves. In just 10 days time we should see Pepe unleashed on Newcastle United and hopefully it will be the start of a long and fruitful Arsenal career. He’s only 24 years old so he still has his best years ahead of him and maybe he can be the player to help change our fortunes and get us back into title contention and bring back Champions League football too.

That’s it for today.

See you tomorrow.