Reiss Nelson joined the Arsenal Hale End Academy when he was just nine years old, and grew through the youth ranks before making his debut as an 18-year-old in the Community Shield win against Chelsea in 2017. His first major stint with competitive football came through when Arsenal sent him out on loan to Hoffenheim and he showed great potential, scoring seven goals in 29 appearances. Following the successful loan stint, Nelson got his breakthrough under Unai Emery and featured consistently for Arsenal, despite a lot of injury struggles.
However, minutes came hard to come by under Mikel Arteta, even though he was one of the gaffer’s favored attacking substitutes. Due to the paucity of game time, Nelson moved to Feyernoord and helped them to a UEFA Conference League finals against Roma as well as a third place finish in the EreDivisie that campaign.
Nelson continued to remain on the doldrums with Arteta trusting certain players on a consistent basis, and managed to see a handful of minutes, scoring a brace and supplying an assist as a substitute in the 5-0 drubbing of Nottingham Forest, and more famously, scoring that last-minute winner against Bournemouth in March 2023. He was set to leave Arsenal on a Bosman, but somehow, he was convinced to stay, and he signed a contract extension with the club for the foreseeable future.
Last season, Nelson played only 579 minutes of football in the entire campaign, with two starts in the League Cup, one start and 14 substitute appearances in the Premier League and one start and four substitute appearances in the Champions League. With Nelson touted as Bukayo Saka’s backup, he found games hard to come by with Saka being an ever-present in the team.
According to The Athletic, Nelson has informed the Arsenal higher ups that he is open to departure this summer, as it’s very evident that he would never be a first teamer in the club. A couple of Premier League clubs are interested in his services with the likes of Crystal Palace, Fulham, Nottingham Forest and West Ham mentioned. Arsenal is believed to be willing to accept £20 million for his services, and if we can get close to that, I’d regard it as good business.
In all honesty, I like Nelson but I believe his services are better utilized in mid-table sides that would grant him consistent football and offer him a chance to improve his game because he has stagnated horribly at Arsenal. I hope this materializes to a transfer, so we will keep our fingers crossed and wait for Fabrizio Romano and David Ornstein to do their thang.
Elsewhere, the European Championships kicked off yesterday with Germany taking on Scotland and what we witnessed last night was a mauling. Commiserations to Kieran Tierney and the Scottish fans that made their way to Allianz Arena last night. I’m sure they would have downed their sorrows with quality beer in Bavaria.
The decimation commenced when Toni Kroos sent a cross field ball to Joshua Kimmich (remember him and his evil header against us in the quarterfinals?), that teed up a simple threaded pass to Florian Wirtz. The confident attacking midfielder didn’t connect as well as he would have liked with the ball, but when you have Angus Gunn in full Flappyhandski mode, then you get a goal for your efforts. The second goal saw Ilkay Gundogan send a sumptuous pass to Kai Havertz, that controlled the ball and poked it to Jamal Musiala. Despite being in such a tight space, the youngster blasted a surface-to-goal piledriver that left Gunn with no chance in Hell to make a save.
Gundogan was involved in the third goal after he was scythed down by Porteous. That tackle looked really bad with each passing replay and I’d say that the red card issue by Leandro Trossard’s long lost father, Clement Turpin, was justified, allowing Havertz to send the keeper the wrong way to make it three. Going into the break three goals and a man down was going to be an uphill task, and the floodgates remained open in the second half.
Niclas Fullkrug added to the rout with an evil shot to make it four, but the Scots clawed a goal back when Hendry attacked the ball and it ricocheted off Toni Ruediger for an embarrassing own goal. Substitute, Emre Can, added some gloss to the score line, with a curled effort that Gunn couldn’t parry away.
As a neutral, that was a great way to start the tournament and I’m looking forward to the clashes today. The only Arsenal involvement would potentially be Jorginho against Albania, as I don’t see David Raya starting ahead of Unai Simon in Spain’s clash with Croatia.
Sayonara.