Nicolas Pepe has insisted he could have been a key player for Arsenal this season as he admitted he has no idea what the future holds for him.
The winger became the Gunners' record signing when he joined from Lille in 2019, commanding a £72million price tag. But he failed to live up to expectations after his arrival at the Emirates Stadium, scoring only 27 goals and notching just 21 assists.
With Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli in such good form, Pepe found his game-time diminishing last season. He was then sent out on loan to Ligue 1 side Nice in the summer window, where he has shown flashes of his talent.
But the January arrival of Leandro Trossard appears to have pushed him further down the ranks at his parent club. And Pepe has now aimed a subtle dig at Gunners boss Mikel Arteta for sending him to France in the summer.
"I'm very happy at Nice, there are still two important months for the club. I want to focus on the last two months and the rest, I don't know. There will be discussions. I don't know what Arsenal want to do," he told francebleu.
"I still have a lot of friends there. I could have been important for this club, but it's the manager's choices. I spent my time taking good care of myself and working. Today, yes, I am at 100% of my means even if it will take me a little time to find the pace.
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"Despite the injury, I wanted to stay with the team and come to training, I've always done it like that. With the series we're doing, we want to finish well. We didn't lose. a lot of players for this end of the season so I want to help."
Arteta had defended Pepe in the summer following his loan move to Nice. The Arsenal boss admitted he had struggled to live up to his price tag, but insisted that the winger had tried everything to be a success.
“I think Nico has tried to deal with that [the price tag] in the best possible way, he is not responsible for the price a club pays for him. He has tried everything, his attitude and the way he is, is just phenomenal," Arteta said in August.
"You just have to meet the person because you just love him for the way he is. But then in terms of the decision you have to make on the pitch, who do you select, we made other decisions and obviously that has had an impact on the chances he had to prove his quality.
“It’s been three years and he had some very good moments, some others where he hasn’t really contributed much in terms of minutes. We decided for every party it was the best decision to allow him to go.
"He needs to play minutes, he needs to play football. He was really adamant to do that and we decided that it would be best for everybody to do it. He needed minutes, he has been craving minutes and talking to me a lot about that, I couldn’t guarantee that right now."
