Arsenal’s Chuba Akpom Maturing On Hull City Loan

Chuba Akpom has had an up-and-down loan spell at Hull City but the Arsenal man has had to learn a lot in the process. One lesson at a time.

Coming in to the season, Chuba Akpom was supposed to be with the Arsenal big boys. He had closed out the year with the senior squad and Arsene Wenger himself said that Akpom would not be loaned out. Then, a few days later, he joined the mass of Arsenal players that had been loaned out. Akpom joined the Tigers of Hull City for the year.

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Chuba Akpom is Arsenal’s next in line after this crop of strikers. He has already found his way onto the pitch for the Arsenal first team and despite not scoring a goal, he never looked completely out of hie element in his short cameo appearances.

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Finding consistent time with Hull City has been no easy feat for Akpom. He has started in 14 of his games while serving as a sub in seven of them. In those 1243 minutes he has scored a respectable four goals. Somewhat impressively, he has also maintained an 85% pass completion.

However, Akpom had his first big learning moment against Reading when he was subbed off in the 78′ minute. The decision by manager Steve Bruce was far from his liking.

After laying a bit of a thick tackle on Danny Williams, the two players butted heads like two dueling pachycephalosaurus. Bruce wasted no time in getting Akpom off the pitch, as Robert Snodgrass came on to replace him. Akpom was less then thrilled, as he threw a schoolboy tantrum all the way until he found his seat and then some.

You never like to see this kind of attitude from someone, but there are a lot of positive takeaways from it. First of all, he apologized.

However, it was the responses on twitter and even from manager Steve Bruce that were the real positive from the whole thing. Many fans on the social media were complimenting Akpom for showing some passion and showing a strong desire to be on the pitch.

While Steve Bruce was less than thrilled, he still echoed the same sentiment.

“I’ve been in the game long enough to understand emotions run high and sometimes you make a complete fool of yourself. He’s got that little edge which all good players have got, but you have to control that,” Bruce said via the Guardian.

Although Bruce went on to insinuate that the Arsenal product was an impetuous child, we are going to focus on the positives. Akpom learned form his mistake. You will not see him throwing a similar tantrum any time soon. Part of that is going to be a self-learned lesson and part of that is going to come from Steve Bruce being a no-nonsense manager.

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But again, you can’t walk away from this without acknowledging the passion that Akpom has for the game. That passion comes from a want to be something, both at Hull City and at Arsenal. That is a good thing. You should never feel bad about passion.

Arsenal will be thrilled to have that passion back on the side come the summer time.