‘Extraordinary’ 23-year-old was initially wary about leaving Arsenal on loan this summer

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Arsenal defender Nuno Tavares was initially very wary of leaving the North London club on loan to Nottingham Forest this summer.

That’s according to a report in The Athletic which details that Tavares was wary of making a hasty decision.

Steve Cooper, Nottingham Forest’s manager, made Tavares a key part of his plans for implementing a 3-4-3 at the club this season.

The 23-year-old was envisioned as the player to add pace on the left hand side at Forest.

And although Tavares eventually agreed to the move – he made his debut at Stamford Bridge last weekend, he did show some caution.

Tavares delayed his decision to the point where Forest were reportedly in France holding talks over alternatives.

And it may have only been an asking price too high for Monaco’s Ismael Jakobs which kept Tavares’ loan deal alive.

However, given how Tavares picked up three points at Chelsea on debut, he’s probably not too displeased with his decision.

Tavares was always going to struggle for any minutes at Arsenal this season, and Forest seems like a great opportunity.

Tavares was unsure about leaving Arsenal for Forest this summer

Arsenal ended up having something of a defender exodus this summer.

Although not all were permanent, Rob Holding, Kieran Tierney, Pablo Mari and Auston Trusty all joined ‘extraordinary’ Tavares in leaving the club.

And there are only now a couple of players remaining that Arteta is known to want to offload.

Of those two, it’s feasible that only Cedric Soares will remain an Arsenal player beyond the next week or so.

Nicolas Pepe now looks very close to departing the club and is strongly linked with two Turkish teams.

It took some time but Arsenal eventually found ways to offload players from their ‘unsustainable’ squad.

And although Tavares was hesitant to leave the club for Forest, there would seem little point in him remaining an Arsenal player in the coming months.