There have been many examples in recent years of Arsenal players heading out on loan only for their spell elsewhere to not go as intended.
Takuma Asano knows that only too well, with the Japanese attacker now in his third stint away from the club and seemingly no closer to ever getting the chance to represent Arsenal.
After joining Arsenal in 2016, Asano was sent on loan to Stuttgart and did rather well, earning himself a further year with the German club.
However, Asano found it difficult to cope following Stuttgart’s promotion to the Bundesliga, and he made less of an impact in his second spell.
Then came this season’s loan at Hannover, which hasn’t gone to plan. That, though, isn’t just down to Asano, with the 24-year-old having suffered some injuries that have hindered his progress.
In recent weeks Asano has become more involved with the team and featured as a substitute in the defeat to Borussia Dortmund this weekend. There is much work to do, however, if he is to get a run of games in the starting lineup before the end of the campaign.
If he is to stand any chance of succeeding at Arsenal then Asano must perform exceptionally well for Hannoverin the coming months, if indeed he gets am opportunity.
The likelihood is that Asano will never play a game for Arsenal, despite being capable of operating up front, out wide or behind the striker.
Asano’s contract with Arsenal expires in the summer of 2020, and, if no permanent buyer can be found this year, then it seems likely that he will be sent out on loan again for the remainder of his deal.
There is an obscure group of players who signed for Arsenal but ended up spending the vast majority of their time at the club out on loan without representing the Gunners competitively, with Pedro Botelho, Samuel Galindo and Wellington amongst its members.
Asano will be doing all he can to ensure that his name is not added to that list.
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Jeorge Bird is the author of www.arsenalyouth.wordpress.com Follow him on Twitter @jeorgebird
Great signing
Good luck to him. A lot of his highlights are from situations that don’t occur at the higher level (defensive blunders), he’ll need to make a big step up!
Also spell-check please. The bane of typos!
Only ever heard of Wellington and I will eat a whole Wellington if this fella ever gets a senior cap for us!
Botelho was a mainstay for my early FIFA teams as he would develop into a decent left back. Galindo? Not so much.
Shame about Asano but this is football. Consider even Ryo Miyachi couldn’t make it and he was freaking Ryodinho at one point.
Sad
As good as a no.
Give him a chance. If only in pre season. Let’s see what he can do in an Arsenal shirt.
What do we have to lose?
We obviously saw something in him that warranted buying him in the first place.
For all of those players the issue was that they couldn’t get work permits to play in England. Hopefully this is something we’ll no longer be doing in future.
The only thing we saw was marketing opportunities in the Asian markets. Junichi Inamoto.
Some of these players should have been given an opportunity. Our handling of their loan deals was atrocious and downright amateurish. Players like Wellington, Total and Ryo would have great loan spells and yet, never even got to see a pre-season game. Zelalem made his name in pre-season, maybe some of these players could have done the same.
I think that argument only worked with Silva tbh. The others, like Ryo did in fact get chances.
I think injuries ruined Ryo.