Arsenal: Reiss Nelson must learn from loan history

In his press conference prior to Arsenal’s trip to Cardiff City, Unai Emery extolled the opportunity that Reiss Nelson has while on loan at Hoffenheim. Nelson, however, must learn from the poor loan history of the club.

Reiss Nelson is on his way out of Arsenal. Three days ago, writing that sentence would have come with a rather dark sense of doom. The initial reporting of the situation suggested that he would be leaving on a permanent basis. That has since been amended.

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And now, two days later, with the European deadline closing, the deal and all its minute details have been officially confirmed: Nelson will join Hoffenheim on a season-long loan while also signing a new long-term contract extension with the Gunners. A happy ending for all, eventually.

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Indeed, in his press conference prior to Sunday afternoon’s trip to Cardiff City, Unai Emery extolled the opportunity that Nelson now has to play regularly in a top European level:

"“It’s a very big chance for him and the level there is important. We think he needs, because he is very young, he needs to take a new level to play, a new level also to take minutes, to take experience and it’s for that reason we were speaking at the club with the coaches about this possibility. And also, with him, we decided together: club, coaches and the player. It’s a good chance for him to take minutes in and play.”"

And Emery is correct. It sure is a rare and special opportunity for Nelson, one that he himself has clearly been pushing hard for. But there are still past occurrences that the flying winger should heed.

While Arsenal’s London rivals have been exploiting the loan market to extreme extents, offloading 37 players on loan this season alone, and have been doing so successfully for some time, under Arsene Wenger, the loan market has never been something that the club has worked to their advantage.

That is not necessarily for want of trying. 16 players were loaned out last year alone, some for the whole season, others for shorter periods of time. Of those 16 players, only two have returned to the club and is now a part of the first-team squad, that being the third-choice goalkeeper, Emiliano Martinez, and disenchanted right-back, Carl Jenkinson. In fact, of the 25 players in the first-team squad this season, only five players have been on loan while being at Arsenal — Martinez and Jenkinson, Hector Bellerin, Aaron Ramsey, and Ainsley Maitland-Niles.

Now, the loan market is for players that are not good enough to make an impression in the first-team squad. So you would expect the proportion of first-team members that have been on loan to total loan players to be small. But that does not make up for the ineptness of Arsenal’s use of the loan system up until this point.

This is the history that Nelson is fighting against. So yes, it is a wonderful opportunity, as Emery rightly claims. But history illustrates the difficulties that loan players encounter. Nelson will have to work hard to overcome them.