Reiss Nelson and Ainsley Maitland-Niles reached the Europa League Conference final on Thursday, at the expense of William Saliba and Matteo Guendouzi.

Arsenal loanee Reiss Nelson was taking on another couple of loanees in William Saliba and Matteo Guendouzi in the Europa Conference League semi-final on Thursday.

Feyenoord had a 3-2 lead over Marseille following the first leg, with Nelson providing an assist to help give them that advantage.

The second leg was much less exciting, with no goals in a tense draw. But that suited Nelson and Feyenoord just fine, as they’ll now progress to the final.

It was particularly encouraging to see Nelson working so hard in a game where his team had to do a lot of tracking back and defending.

The winger’s loan has taken a significant upturn with plenty of goals and assists lately, but Thursday showed he can bring the hard graft too.

Sadly, it also meant losing two other Arsenal loanees from the competition, and Saliba and Guendouzi will be disappointed to end a promising campaign without any trophies. They still have a Champions League qualification place to play for in Ligue 1 though.

In the other tie, Ainsley Maitland-Niles was once again named on the bench, as he has been so often in recent times. He watched on as Tammy Abraham gave AS Roma a 1-0 win over Leicester City.

Maitland-Niles has played some part in the Europa Conference League run so far, making three appearances in the six games since he arrived. But he’ll have to work hard to break back into the starting lineup before the final.

Nelson is nailed on to start that final at the moment, so we should see at least one of the loanees playing in Tirana on May 25th – and at least one of them lifting the trophy afterwards.