Mikel Arteta has never been afraid to make difficult decisions.
The list of players whose contracts have been terminated during his tenure tells its own story — Mesut Ozil on £350,000 a week, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang on £300,000, Willian on £240,000, Nicolas Pepe on £140,000, and most recently Takehiro Tomiyasu last summer.
When a player is no longer part of the plan, Arteta has consistently shown the ruthlessness to cut ties sooner rather than later.
Another such decision may be approaching. Reiss Nelson has returned to Arsenal following a loan spell at Brentford, where injuries restricted him to just 14 appearances.
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He is now entering the final year of his contract on wages of around £100,000 a week, and with no credible offers for a permanent transfer on the horizon, Arsenal face a familiar dilemma.
Nelson is a player Arteta has always spoken warmly about. “We think the potential is there and we think we’ve seen something in Reiss that is special,” the Arsenal manager said back in 2022.
In the summer of 2023, Arteta was personally involved in convincing Nelson to sign a new contract, alongside then sporting director Edu Gaspar. The manager clearly believed in him.
Reiss Nelson has likely already played his last game for Arsenal
Belief only goes so far. Persistent injuries have derailed what should have been the prime years of Nelson’s development.
He is 26 years old and managed just 14 appearances last season at Brentford, who chose not to trigger their option to make him permanent.
Before that, he had a loan spell at Fulham which started promisingly until a severe hamstring injury cut that short. He played just 12 games for the Cottagers, scoring twice and assisting once.
Nelson will always have a place in Arsenal’s recent history. Who could forget his dramatic 97th-minute winner against Bournemouth in 2023?
That was a special Emirates moment, even if it didn’t quite lead to a Premier League title that season.
He is Arsenal’s longest-serving current player, an academy graduate who has made 90 first-team appearances across a decade at the club. Fans will always have a soft spot for him.
But at £100,000 a week with one year left on his deal and little prospect of a meaningful fee, a loan or contract termination feels like the most likely outcome this summer.
Arteta has made harder calls than this before, and always for the right reasons.
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