Ivory Coast professional football player Nicolas Pepe has opened up on his nightmare spell at English Premier League (EPL) side Arsenal which he wants to forget in a hurry.
Pepe who began his senior club career with Poitiers in the Championnat de France Amateur 2 joined the Gunners in a club-record signing from Lille in 2019, with the Premier League club paying an initial £20 million and the rest £52 million split over five years.
Pepe, who made no fewer than 112 appearances in all competitions for Arsenal and scored 27 goals, did not live up to expectations, and his contract was terminated last summer, with the Gunners eager to remove him from the pay bill.
While opening up in an interview with French newspaper L’Equipe, Pepe revealed that the criticism he was faced with affected his mental state and his performance.
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”It was almost harassment. I don’t look at social media much, but if my brother told me “This is what they said about you”, it would affect me unconsciously,’ Pepe said.
”It also came from the media or certain members of the club. They don’t realise that it can affect the mental state, the family and it affects performance.
‘’The only people who have always supported me are the Arsenal fans.
‘’At Arsenal, I suffered a kind of trauma, as if my passion had been ripped away from me, I had a disgust for football. I doubted myself to the point that I thought about quitting everything.
‘’I wondered how they could have been so relentless in their attacks on me. They even called me the biggest flop in the history of the Premier League. But I refused to mope.” He noted.
