Nicolas Pepe produced the miss of the year… & we love him even more now | OneFootball

Former Arsenal winger Nicolas Pepe will be having nightmares tonight after an astonishing miss for Villarreal in their La Liga match with Rayo Vallecano.

Even though Villarreal won the game 4-0, it was Pepe’s jaw-dropping failure to net from two inches out that would be the occasion’s lasting legacy.

It was the level of sitter that required repeat viewings. The old cliche that your grandmother would’ve scored is somehow redundant; you’d have fancied the corpse of Cliff Bastin to stick this one away.

An incisive pass set Tani Oluwaseyi through on goal. The fact that Oluwaseyi was offside is academic for this article, as he rounded the Vallecano keeper and squared the ball to Pepe.

The pass was slow but accurate, rolling into the vacant six-yard box where the onrushing former Arsenal man would surely bundle the ball over the line?

Two seconds later, the ball was in the stands behind the goal. A spectator could’ve blinked and missed Pepe sidefooting his finish into oblivion.

Several Villarreal fans were pictured with rictus grins on their faces, as if they’d just seen their keys fall down the drain.

Once he’d untangled himself from the net and taken his frustration out on the pitch, Pepe’s own expression was ashen.

Pepe joined Arsenal in 2019 for a then-club record fee of £72 million from Lille, a fee that already feels like a misprint but was widely met with jubilation from the club’s supporters at the time.

However, despite some early success, things quickly went sour. Reflecting on his time in London, Pepe revealed how much the weight of expectations and criticism affected him both on and off the pitch.

“I was bullied in London,” Pepe said in a candid interview with L’Equipe in 2024. “I didn’t ask for €80 million to be paid for me. It was a kind of trauma, as if my passion had been taken away.

“I had an aversion to football and thought about quitting. They were talking about me as the biggest failure in the history of the Premier League.”

Pepe had his moments at Arsenal – more than you might remember and more than clickbait lists of the worst signings in Premier League history will acknowledge.

But the size of the transfer fee overwhelmed all critical facilities. The Gunners were at a low ebb, with Unai Emery sacked and Mikel Arteta’s reign starting with extensive growing pains.

Even with 27 goals, of which 16 came in the 2020-21 season, Pepe was destined to underwhelm. The emergence of Bukayo Saka from the Hale End academy painted the Ivorian in an even less flattering light.

When he left Arsenal, initially on loan to French club Nice and then to Trabzonspor of Turkey in September 2023, it came as a relief to all parties.

Happily, Pepe revived his career sufficiently to earn a move to Villarreal, where he recorded nine goal contributions last season.

“Spanish football is a lot calmer — more technical than England and France,” he told The Athletic.

“That’s what suits me the best. I think you can see that out on the pitch. I have a good understanding with my team-mates and I feel at ease here. I feel good.”

We are big supporters of players who failed to fire in England, but rediscovered themselves elsewhere. The Premier League churn is almost inhumane, even for players with god-like ability.

And Pepe’s stupendous miss almost adds to his charm. The unfairly castigated starboy of a more innocent Arsenal age is still an intoxicating mix of brilliance and bewilderment.