To do it once was impressive enough. To do it twice, with the second free-kick even better than the first, felt genuinely seismic for Nicolas Pepe, the club-record signing who chose a desperate, gruelling night of Europa League football to properly announce himself as an Arsenal matchwinner.

A group of players that has relied so much on Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette to bail them out of trouble will now know that they can also turn to Pepe when the going gets tough. It certainly got tough here, so tough that at times it felt like this would become one of the worst nights of Unai Emery’s tenure.

Arsenal had no creativity, no control and, to be frank, no ideas for much of the game. But they did have £72 million worth of elite attacking quality in Pepe, who curled Arsenal back into the game and then did it all over again to win the match in the 92nd minute.

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