Takuma Asano scored his first goal of the season for loan club Stuttgart, in a 1-1 draw against Hannover.

Asano is playing his first season in one of Europe’s top five leagues, having helped Stuttgart achieve promotion to the Bundesliga last season. Playing largely as a winger, the 23-year-old was moved to a central position in the last couple of games, and started the match against Hannover as a centre-forward.

The switch paid off, as Takuma scored his first goal of the season, pouncing on a rebound to give his team the lead.

https://twitter.com/Joe_Nelson1994/status/934149574175940608

Although he’s appeared in 11 of the side’s league matches so far, only six of those appearances have been starts. Perhaps finally getting off the mark in the goals department will give the Japanese international a chance to start more regularly.

Takuma scored for Japan against Australia back in August, although again he’s been playing on the wing most of the time for his country.

It’s hard to say how effective he’d be scoring goals if he did play in the centre more often, but Asano does at least seem to have a striker’s anticipation, knowing when he might have a chance to score a rebound, or get in behind.

Hopefully he’ll be get those chances a bit more often in the coming games, to help him push on.