We all had high hopes of Chuba Akpom becoming the next in line to become an Arsenal striking legend after some great introductory performances towards the end of last season. Arsene Wenger even said in the summer that he would staying at the Emirates this season as extra cover for Giroud and Walcott, but whatever happened after that Le Prof finally sent him off on loan to Hull City to see if he could prove himself with regular appearances in the Championship.
But things have not worked out as we hoped. Akpom has scored a measly 4 goals in 25 appearances for the club, and Steve Bruce has had to pull him up about his attitude a couple of times already this season. Now it seems he has blown it completely after he became overly aggressive towards Reading’s Danny Williams and came very close to being sanctioned by the referee.
To diffuse the situation, Bruce substituted the young Gunner, who reacted by angrily throwing his gloves at his manager when coming off the pitch. As you can imagine, Bruce was not impressed with his attitude and told the press after the match: “I’ve been in the game long enough to understand emotions run high and sometimes you make a complete fool of yourself,” Bruce said.
“He’s got that little edge which all good players have got, but you have to control that.
“I’ve had World Cup winners throw their gloves at me. Then I take a bit of notice. I’m not going to take notice of a 20-year-old who, unfortunately, when things don’t go his way spits his dummy out and throws his toys out of the pram.”
so Bruce is hardly going to be sending a favourable report to Wenger on his progress. If it was an isolated incident, and he had redeemed himself by scoring lots of goals then he could have possibly got away with it, but with an ongoing attitude problem and no goals to show for it, I can’t imagine Wenger expecting Akpom to be able to cope with the pressure or be able to score goals in the Premiership next season.
So goodbye Chuba, we had such high hopes for you…..