On Wednesday morning, Hannover 96 officially announced they were signing Asano on loan. There are rumours of an option-to-buy at the end of the season, at around €3m, but for now it’s just a temporary transfer. Arsenal also later confirmed the deal on their website.

Now Asano himself has spoken to the Hannover website about the move.

“I’m very happy to come to Hanover,” he said. “I’m going to go full throttle to repay the club’s confidence in me and make the 96 fans happy.”

Coach Andre Breitenreiter seemed similarly pleased to get a deal over the line, insisting that the club have a lot of belief in the Japanese international’s potential.

“Takuma is a versatile offense player, he adds a lot of speed and action on the pitch,” Breitenreiter said. “At the same time he has a strong mentality. We are convinced that he has great potential to evolve at Hannover 96 and make his next step.”

It’s a third loan in three years for the player, after he spent time with Stuttgart for the last two seasons.

Asano had a poor spell with Stuttgart this year. After an encouraging first season, where he generally played well, things just got worse in his second campaign.

The 23-year-old made 18 appearances for the first team in 2017/18, the last of which came in December 2017. He scored one goal and provided one assist in total, and only made the squad four times in 2018.

Dropping down to the Stuttgart second team, he scored once and assisted once in two appearances. It wasn’t enough to get him another first team opportunity though.

Hopefully this year he’ll get more chances and take advantage by putting in some good performances.

To check out our evaluation of all Arsenal’s loanees this season, click ‘Next’