Welcome to the Emirates, Nicolas Pépé. We’ve been expecting you. On a chilly, boisterous night in north London, Arsenal’s £72m record signing produced a performance that started tentatively, then revved into full life with an early goal.
At which point Pépé proceeded to unpick the left side of Manchester United’s defence with a deceptively easy sense of verve. So much of football at this level is about pressing an advantage when it comes, and the Arsenal manager, Mikel Arteta, did so here. At times in the first half Luke Shaw just looked horribly out of place in Pépé’s company, a single stone Easter Island head planted in the sand, watching in sombre silence as a game of football took place around him.
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