Leicester City were told by Oxford manager Gary Rowett in May that they had a Premier League-level centre-back on their hands in Ben Nelson.
But two months into the new season, he’s not even played a minute in the Championship. In fact, the homegrown defender hasn’t even made the bench for City’s past five league fixtures.
There are aspects to Nelson’s game that show he has potential to be a first-rate Premier League defender, but there’s also plenty for him to learn to reach that potential.
However, it feels like he’s trapped in a cycle many young people often find themselves in, even outside of football. You need experience to get the job, but you need the job to get experience.
There’s no other outfield position where experience is so highly-valued than at centre-back. It’s a position where errors are at their most costly, and so reliable figures are needed at the heart of the defence.
For other clubs, it might be the case that they can let a player work through their mistakes in the hope of helping them to learn the trade. But unfortunately, City don’t feel like one of those clubs.
Because of Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) and the problems the club have encountered, they could really do with the financial boost of getting straight back into the Premier League.
And so there’s less of a likelihood that they’ll gamble on a centre-back who has Premier League credentials but may also make a few mistakes.
Because in Nelson’s one outing so far, in the Carabao Cup at Huddersfield, he really did have a difficult time. He was caught on the ball and was fortunate not to concede two penalties.
It’s not really a surprise that Marti Cifuentes has now reverted to a proven combination in Wout Faes and Jannik Vestergaard, a pairing that got City promoted two seasons ago.
It’s not that their games are mistake-free. They’ve played for the club long enough now to rack up quite a list of errors. But certainly in the Championship, they rarely make so many errors in a single game so as to cost the team points regularly.
Vestergaard was guilty of an error against Wrexham, but was one of City’s best players against Swansea and was defensively very solid.
Faes was beaten all ends up at West Brom, but he’s mostly been strong in the back-line this season. They remain a safer bet than Nelson.
When January comes around, City could do with finding a loan club for Nelson, a side more willing or more able to let him make mistakes but also allow him show off his best attributes.
Because he is still inexperienced. He only played 17 games at Oxford last season because of injury, not even half of a campaign, and so he’s not yet played 50 league fixtures in his career. He needs another opportunity to help him break the cycle.
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