Arsenal's Takuma Asano will continue at Stuttgart after failing to get UK work permit

Arsenal striker Takuma Asano will continue to ply his trade with VfB Stuttgart for a second successive season after failing to meet the criteria required to acquire a UK work permit.

The newly promoted Bundesliga club confirmed on Monday (19 June) that they had spoken to the Gunners and the player about continuing his loan after he helped the club gain promotion to the German top-flight last season.

"Takuma Asano will play with us next season. We have discussed this with him, his advisers and Arsenal," Stuttgart's sporting director Jan Schindelmeiser said, as quoted by the London Evening Standard.

According to German publication Bild, Arsenal had set three stipulations which would allow them to recall the striker early from his loan spell with the German club, failing which a second loan spell would be triggered.

The first was Stuttgart continuing to play in the second-tier of German football, which they are not after they earned promotion by winning the Bundesliga second division title. The second was if he played fewer than 25 games throughout the course of the season – the Japanese forward made 27 appearances in all competitions - and the third was if he received a work permit, which he has not.

Asano, who arrived from Sanfrecce Hiroshima last summer, was earmarked as one for the future by Arsene Wenger. An added spell in the Bundesliga is likely to help the striker continue his adaptation in Europe, but doubts still remain about his ability to challenge for a place in the Arsenal first-team when he is granted a UK work permit.

Wenger is in the market for a striker this summer and Arsenal has been linked with big money moves for French duo Alexandre Lacazette and Kylian Mbappe. It is claimed that the north London club are more keen on the latter and are willing to sanction a world-record £100m player-plus-cash offer to bring the AS Monaco forward to the Emirates this summer.