The centre-back Ben Nelson is yet to experience victory in his six games for loan club Oxford, but that does not mean his stint at the Kassam Stadium is not going to plan
After six games, Ben Nelson has yet to experience winning as an Oxford United player. Therefore, it would be reasonable to assume that the young centre-back for Leicester City is having a difficult time while his loan, but that couldn’t be further from the reality.
To begin with, Oxford has drew five of Nelson’s six games, including matches against recently relegated Luton and promotion-threatened Burnley and West Brom. Nelson only lost to Sunderland, the top team in the table, this past weekend.
Results, however, are not the top objective for City in any case. Naturally, they would want Nelson to be on the winning team, but it is not essential to his growth.
Their goal is to push him, and the evidence thus far points to that being the case. There were other Championship clubs available to Nelson, many of whom had greater chances of promotion than Oxford. However, Nelson was placing himself in a situation where he would be put to the test and compelled to learn the other side of the game by choosing Kassam Stadium as his new home.
The 20-year-old has long been seen as a centre-back prospect in the vein of John Stones, whose strengths lie in possession rather than physical prowess. Those elements of the game would have also been the focus of his few appearances with City last season, when he played for Enzo Maresca’s possession-dominant team.
However, there is defending to be done at Oxford. Des Buckingham’s team was always going to be on the defensive because they were a recently promoted club. They now rank 17th in the division with an average possession percentage of 47%.
Nelson is working hard on the back foot as a result. In order to monitor strikers and dangermen and protect his goal, he is being urged to be vigilant for ninety minutes. So far, he appears to be doing a fantastic job.
Oxford has given up more crosses into the box than any other Championship team, but Nelson is fourth in the division for clearances per ninety minutes, indicating that he is positioning himself well to defend his penalty area. He is also one of only two players in the division to have made at least eight attempts at a tackle and to have a perfect record, and he has a 100% tackle rate versus rival dribblers.
He isn’t on the team just to defend, though. He can still demonstrate his ability to launch attacks and carry the ball forward by stepping out from the back line. That’s how Oxford wants him to play.
Craig Short, Everton and Blackburn’s top-flight centre back and assistant manager, told the Oxford Mail: “I’ve talked to him a lot about it, and I’m urging him to do that. You can do it if you have a centre forward pressuring you.
He also has remarkable speed. He is arguably one of the fastest players here and moves smoothly across the ground. With some of the left-footed diagonals he was hitting, you wouldn’t believe he was right-footed. He has two good feet.
“Of course, we’ll encourage him to do that, and you’ll always have someone to cover for him. I won’t stop him from doing it.
It’s the ideal loan because he can work on both sides of the game, and he appears to have established himself as a consistent starter lately. He won’t be dropped anytime soon, based on the positive feedback from Oxford supporters.
Comparisons to Harvey Barnes and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, who both had fantastic seasons in the second division and established themselves as mainstays in the City starting lineup within a few months of their returns, will be made in light of his performance in the Championship. Nelson could follow suit.
They have the opportunity to recall Nelson in January and are closely monitoring him out of all of their loanees. They currently have plenty of alternatives at the defence thanks to their four senior center-backs: Jannik Vestergaard, Conor Coady, Caleb Okoli, and Wout Faes. However, there are indications that Nelson will be the person they turn to if things change, whether that happens next summer or earlier, saving the club millions of dollars by avoiding the trade market.
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