Well it now seems very certain that Mikel Arteta is going to get his Number One summer target after all. Martin Odegaard only came to us on loan in January, but he obviously impressed Arteta so much that he made it very clear that he wanted the Norwegian back at the Emirates for the new campaign.
In fact Arteta told Arsenal.com: “Well we have a very clear and strong opinion on what we would like to do. He’s not our player. We’ll have discussions in the next few weeks, but first of all we need to respect that he’s a Real Madrid player. We’ll have those communications. We’ve tried to make everything that we could to get Martin performing for the team, which I think he’s done, and he has adapted really well to our way of playing and to our football club.”
But ten weeks later, after it looked like Carlo Ancelotti intended to keep the youngster at Real Madrid, the Italian coach has now failed to register Odegaard in his matchday squad and has basically told him that he needs to leave: “The situation with Odegaard is like with Vallejo, it’s down to where we are right now, we can’t register all of them,” Ancelotti told Marca.
“Tomorrow [Saturday] that could change. We have until September 2 to make the final decision. I’ve told Odegaard that there are eight players in his position, but it’s not final. I had to choose.”
Having checked all the bookies, I have found only two offering odds on Odegaard coming back to Arsenal, and both make him very short odds-on to return.
I am sure this will cheer Arteta up, but how will the fans feel about it?