Arsenal: Takuma Asano Goalless Loan Mildly Sobering

Arsenal’s loans are getting some mixed reviews. Takuma Asano’s loan to Stuttgart is not going the best, but maybe this is a sobering opportunity.

Arsenal has a mass of young men out on loan. Some of them are going quite well, but there seems to be an inordinate amount of unsuccessful loans in the works this season.

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Jon Toral undoubtedly takes the cake, as he has not played since early August, but there is an equally perturbing loan going on in the center of Europe.

Young Japanese striker Takuma Asano is on loan at second tier German side Vfb Stuttgart, where he has played 229 minutes in three starts and one substitute appearance. In those minutes, he has yet to score a goal.

It’s a small sample size, so it’s not like we should be ridiculously worried. My main concern comes from the fact that he was removed from the squad in Stuttgart’s last match, a match they won by the largest margin yet this year, 4-0.

Having yet to play 90 minutes, not scoring a goal and being the man who made way en route to the side winning 4-0, this loan has not taken off the way we might have hoped.

There was a time when Asano seemed like our striker solution, to our utter horror. His expectations were set incredibly high by the price we paid for his services, the way Wenger talked him up and the always-increasing goal return that he put up in the Japanese J-League.

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While we should have known (and anticipated) that translating from Japan to Germany would be no easy feat, I still find this early return to be rather sobering. Not disappointing, really, just sobering.

Call me crazy, but I put extreme faith in Wenger’s judgment and his keenness to snap up Asano as quickly as he did got me excited that maybe this young man could be readier than we thought. Another slick Wenger signing, if you will.

Seeing him struggle to get off the block in second-tier Germany puts that thought to bed.

Asano is showing a tendency to be a slow acclimator. Even when in Japan, it took him a season to settle in before his goals started to really take off. Once they did, he was snapped up.

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This year will probably follow a similar trend. It will be a slow build up before, hopefully, a take off in goal production.