Arsenal: Reiss Nelson can be the guinea pig that proves the change

Arsenal have not had a lot of success loaning out players in recent years, but Reiss Nelson can change that, and from the looks of it, he intends to.

Arsenal surprised more than a few by loaning out Reiss Nelson to Bundesliga side Hoffenheim, but with the Englishman scoring in his debut, we can’t help but smile and wonder if he is the loanee that breaks the mold of previous failures.

Loaning is a delicate art that not many top-tier Premier League clubs seem to find much success with. Chelsea, for instance, have half of the known world on loan, but all this ends up doing is frustrating the players and preventing them from getting the time they deserve.

Arsenal don’t boast much of a better record. We have seen “the next big thing” disappear in endless loans. The list is massive: Daniel Crowley, Jon Toral, Kelechi Nwakali, Serge Gnabry… so on and so forth. Even Calum Chambers, who was supposed to be the one that broke the mold, is loaned out again, although this one seems rather unfair, to be honest.

Reiss Nelson, however, looks to be different. Whereas those previous players were either sent to a club without much of a plan, or they were just never going to make it at the Emirates in the first place, Nelson is being sent to a young, enthusiastic club in Hoffenheim that has a track record of playing guys like Nelson in a league that develops young players like Nelson.

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Which is to say that everything about this loan move, before anything even happened, looked to be the right idea. It wasn’t just picking a club out of a hat and sending a player there to let him wilt and die. It was calculated, intelligent, and, ideally, fruitful.

With Nelson’s first goal in his first start, the fruits are already popping up on the branches. Nelson wasn’t going to find consistent time with the senior team in England, at best he would have been starting in the side competitions, which is nice, but limited.

With Hoffenheim, he can develop his craft in a serious competition that will prepare him for the Premier League that is to come. He is a guinea pig that the mad scientists actually care about, which, if it breeds the results we are expecting, might finally break the mold of players going on loan to die, but rather to live.

Plus, it’s just another excuse to watch the Bundesliga. So there’s that.