New Delhi, Jul 18 (IANS): Former Arsenal winger Nicolas Pepe revealed that during his time in the Premier League side, he faced a lot of criticism for his signing amount which pushed him on the verge of retiring from football. Arsenal signed Pepe for a club record amount of 72 million pound in 2019 from French club Lille. Despite displaying signs of potential in his first two seasons at Arsenal, the winger was unable to leave a lasting impression and, during his third Premier League season, was granted permission to sign a loan with Nice.

Pepe said he was subjected to a lot of flak for his performance and was even termed the "biggest flop in the history of the Premier League".

"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,” he said in an interview with L’Equipe. "It also came from the media or from certain members of the club. They don't realise that it can affect the mental state, and 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 added.

After spending the previous season on loan at Turkish team Trabzonspor, the 29-year-old is presently a free agent and claims that Arsenal made it tough for him to leave the club. "I didn’t care about the money. At Nice, I sat on 25 per cent of my salary. I just wanted to play. I would have liked to terminate earlier in the summer but Arsenal didn’t want to. They said: ‘We bought you for €80m (£72m), we can’t’.

"They asked for large sums of money so it ended up going wrong every time. They ended up accepting after the European market closed.

"Only the Gulf countries and Turkey remained. But Arsenal only agreed to cancel, on the condition that I agreed not to join Saudi Arabia. It was a question of image. And there was this offer from Trabzonspor," he added.