Martial was a victim of working under managers who had no idea or no interest in getting the best out of him. The onus is on Arteta to get the best out of Pepe. We're not a City so he can't be a Guardiola and sign £70m player just to discard them or turn them into squad players.
The guy has barely started consecutive games, and when he does start both he and Auba have spent much of the season operating as wingbacks rather than forwards, only unlike Auba who's had support from Saka/Tierney on the overlap, Pepe has had to contend with an out of form Bellerin who would barely cross the halfway line. Instead of working the ball quickly to Pepe in space, we slowly spray the ball around and find on him the right flank entirely isolated with 3 opposition players around him. Even then, he's still second on the list in terms of goals/assists.
There's a lot more to come from Pepe, part of that will be down to him, but a lot will be down to how Arteta can work the team to get more out of our forwards.
