Unable to find the first-team football he needed to develop at Arsenal, Takuma Asano was sent to Hannover 96 in the Bundesliga to get some minutes under his belt.
Never expected to be a regular starter, the forward has still managed to feature here and there, mostly coming off the bench.
However, Arsenal and Hannover negotiated a clause that would allow the Germans to purchase the Japan international after a certain number of appearances/minutes.
Kicker believe that, as things stand, this could be triggered as early as Saturday against Wolfsburg, but the Bundesliga club are trying to avoid that.
In fact, they’ve gone as far as telling Arsenal they won’t be using Asano any longer so that the clause expires.This, as you might imagine, has caused the Gunners to be ‘angry’ at Hannover, with the information reportedly coming from the London end of things.
Since joining Hannover, Asano has played for 851 minutes split over 15 appearances, scored one goal and assisted teammates once.
