Asano and Holding aren't game-changers, and that's alright

If I’ve been fairly quiet in the last month, it has been because, despite the Euros involving several Arsenal players even through to the latter stages, there has actually been very little news of note around the club. Persistent rumours continue to circle regarding every striker under the sun (on average about a month after West Ham have been linked with them), but it is the two recent additions that have actually occurred that I want to talk about this time.

Takuma Asano has been an Arsenal player for just over three weeks now, and fans are already convinced that he’s ‘another Yaya Sanogo’, whilst articles have appeared online with embedded video discussing a single poor effort in a game after the striker had been put clean through on goal. Similarly, now that Rob Holding’s long-mooted transfer from Bolton Wanderers has finally gone through, many are already worried that he is not of the required calibre to contribute to our team. Why?

I get that literally all there is to keep us going during the transfer season is those rumours of superstars making their way to the Emirates, and that seeing Manchester United willing to break the world transfer record for Paul Pogba is disconcerting, especially when nothing similar is on the cards for us. Add to this the fact that we can quite easily remember back to last year when a similarly positive early signing had us all dreaming of big things to come, only to fall flat after that hype had died down, and a little scepticism is understandable. But that is no reason to pore incessantly over two additions with which there can surely be little complaint so long as they are supplemented. In fact, it is that kind of immediate nay-saying and ‘hot-takery’ which sometimes scuppers these deals, and (ridiculously) not the players or their performances themselves.

To take one particular example, I’m not going to try to seriously claim that Yaya Sanogo is a world-class striker that we ruined, but if I was asked to go about my job in the public eye at 20 years old whilst being slated every time I made a mistake, and judged to a certain extent before I’d even started, I’m not sure that I’d be terribly successful either. Sure, it’s not our job as fans to pick players up and tell them what to do better, but when has relentless criticism ever actually helped, especially when it comes before there is even anything to criticise?

If you want a real opinion on Takuma Asano, rather than ‘I’ve never heard of him, so he must be terrible’, well to be honest I’ve never heard of him either, so I’ve watched the same YouTube videos as every other Arsenal fan has since he signed.

From an entirely personal (and untrained) perspective, I like his pace, but also the fact that (unlike with players like Theo) it seems to be coupled with a willingness to get into a crowded area and head the ball, and also that many of the relatively few goals thus far in his career come from taking the early shot, rather than overplaying the situation and ultimately wasting it. Unfortunately, YouTube videos are a pretty awful way for an armchair fan like me to ‘scout’ players, and it is meaningless to compare nine minutes of ‘highlights’ with nine seasons of watching Theo play live.

That’s the point though, we don’t know how this is going to be play out, but why should we really care at this stage? Not every transfer turns out to lead to a future legend joining the club, and if there appear to be things to like about Asano (and I’m not going to question Arsene’s judgement on that) then why make assumptions and jump to conclusions within an hour of hearing his name for the first time?

Most depressingly, some seem to be using the signing to do exactly what I just said that I wouldn’t, and look to draw conclusions about Arsene from the young striker’s addition to the side. Unlike at most other clubs, our manager lives and dies on his transfers, due to the unique role he takes at Arsenal, and the power afforded to him. For the most part, that’s fair enough, but if you’re using a 21 year old you’ve never seen play to reassert prejudices (right or wrong) that you have against Arsene, then I think the whole thing might be going a bit far, and that’s exactly the kind of thing that ruins careers before they even properly begin.

Frankly, It’s July 23rd, there are 39 days left of the window, Takuma Asano and Rob Holding are not going to be our last two signings this summer, and chances are that a big name striker will arrive at the Emirates before the August 31st deadline, so let’s all calm down, take a deep breath, and look forward to that.

If we go back to thinking about the players who have really excelled at a young age in recent times, it’s names like Hector Bellerin, Alex Iwobi, and (to some extent in his one full season with the first team) Serge Gnabry that stand out. Then look at Calum Chambers, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Theo Walcott. Players who come to us at a young age and with a hefty price tag don’t tend to fare well at the Emirates, but every so often we get a superb talent emerge from the academy and break into the first team.

Let’s just let Takuma do things his own way, rather than obsessing about how many goals he’s scoring or how he stacks up against Sanogo and Chuba Akpom, so that he doesn’t fall into the same trap as those before him.

On to our latest summer signing then. I probably know as much about Rob Holding as I do about Asano to be completely honest, and have only seen three, as opposed to nine, minutes’ worth of ‘highlights’, so I’m probably not best qualified to try to determine whether or not he can be useful at the Premier League level for us immediately. However, what I can tell is that he loves a dodgy Cruyff-turn in and around the area almost as much as John Stones, and must be somewhat competent, because in a frankly awful Bolton side in the Championship last season, he went from near-unknown to their player of the season in just ten months.

Having joined up with the England side that went to the Toulon tournament this summer, one which, by the way, included a certain Calum Chambers, there are clearly bright things in the player’s future, and for (a reported) £2.5m, I’d much rather have him at Arsenal than see him become a star at somewhere like Bournemouth, and be worth ten times that in three years’ time.

Does either player improve the team right now? No. Could they both potentially turn out to be really shrewd additions given the minimal nature of their respective fees? Absolutely. This is not £16m spent on a very young but Premier League tested defender, it’s a couple of million invested in the future, that could pay off sooner rather than later.

As I saw somebody say on Twitter recently, these aren’t really ‘signings’ in the sense that social media fans use the term anyway. I don’t mean that in a derogatory way either, but even though they will most likely link up with the first team, we might as well enjoy them with the same excitement that greeted the Reine-Adelaide/Fortune signings, not an unnecessary amount of scepticism or even anger.

These are talented young players, who are coming in (and I really cannot stress this enough) to supplement bigger signings, rather than circumvent them, and I for one am ok with that, so let’s lay off the new guys for a bit, welcome them to the Arsenal, sit back and see what the next six weeks has in store for us.