Leicester City academy graduate Ben Nelson, on loan at Oxford United, has received plenty of praise for his strong debut performance last weekend.
From academy to first team
The 20-year-old is one of the highly-rated youngsters at the club and joined EFL Championship side Oxford on a one-year loan deal. Having been on the fringes of the first-team squad for the majority of last season, Enzo Maresca gave Nelson a deserved Foxes debut towards the end of the campaign. The defender made a total of five appearances last season, including two starts. Steve Cooper considered keeping Nelson to be a part of his first-team squad, but the young defender wanted to leave for regular minutes.
Nelson debuted for the Yellows last weekend, playing the full 90 minutes in a 0-0 draw against Burnley at the Kassam Stadium. The centre-back started alongside another Leicester academy graduate, Elliot Moore, and had an impressive performance. Despite Burnley enjoying 70% possession, Oxford restricted the joint Championship top-scorers to just one shot on target. Nelson made three tackles and five clearances and won 80% of his ground duels. Nelson was also good in possession, recording a pass accuracy of 80%.
“We’ve got a wonderful young player” says Des Buckingham
Oxford manager Des Buckingham was full of praise for the England Under-20 international in his post-match interview.
“We’ve got a wonderful young player who has played at this level in Ben Nelson. He’s been patiently waiting and training well. After 15 or 20 minutes, he calmed down and settled down and showed the type of player he can be and will be.
“But he hasn’t played for a long time and that can take time, certainly for a young player. For him to come through that 20-minute period and to grow into the game, it’ll be good for him and very good for us.”
Speaking to the media, Nelson said: “It was a tough game, and we didn’t have as much of the ball as we liked, but when we had to defend, we did it really well, and we came out with the clean sheet, so you can’t complain about that. They’re a top team; you can see the way they play. But we nullified that today, and that’s good for us.”
