Will Martin Odegaard reach the heights of Frank Lampard by the end of his Arsenal career?
The Arsenal and Norwegian international Martin Odegaard, 24, currently has eight goals and five assists for the gunners this season, his current career best return and we’re only halfway through the season.
At his current rate he is on track to score 17 goals by the season conclusion, a tally Frank Lampard only managed at the age of 27 in the prime of his career, so, if you look at both players are there a few similarities between the two?
Football fans have always known the talent Martin holds due to his record breaking first appearance for Real Madrid in 2015; becoming the youngest player to play La Liga football for Los Blancos and replacing none other than Cristiano Ronaldo!
Deemed ‘the wonderkid’ must however have held a massive pressure for the young playmaker, who actually had his best return on loan seasons away from the Santiago Bernabeu (Vitesse, Real Sociedad and obviously Arsenal).
This year he has noticeably added a goal aspect to his game, a key reason why Arsenal is currently top of the league; there has even been some comparisons to the likes of De Bruyne at Manchester City this year.
This comparison is based on the fact that both players take up the inside right channel for their respective teams and take up similar positions in game, yet these players hold different qualities.
De Bruyne is a ‘volume-chance creator’ who produces lots of high quality of crosses into the box, which is not Odegaard’s style, he is much more of a ‘situational-chance creator’ who creates fewer chances but when he does is often of higher quality in the final third.
This technique is shown during his opening assist against Liverpool, a perfectly weighted through ball for Martinelli to finish without breaking stride; or with his stunning round-the-corner assist against Brighton.
However, Odegaard (5) does not have an awful lot of assists when compared to De Bruyne (11) but what is interesting is he ranks third in the league for shot creating actions/pre-assists with 5.1.
Lastly being left footed makes Odegaard a different type of player than the right footed De Bruyne who both seem to master alternative sides of the attacking game.
The comparison to Lampard therefore comes from Odegaard’s off-the-ball positions and habit for scoring goals from midfield with late surges into the opponent’s box.
I am not saying that he is at the ex-Chelsea legends level yet, however, with the current best expected goals for midfielders in the league, he may be showing a lot of similar traits with the league’s greatest ever goalscoring midfielder…
Lampard scored 41 out-of-the-box goals for the Blues, he also was a fantastic dead-ball specialist which we haven’t seen much from Odegaard, but if this is developed in his game, I think he could see that gap close.
In our December 3-0 friendly against AC Milan, saw a glimpse of that underlying Freekick ability of our attacking midfielder.
And he scored a fantastic outside the box goal away against Tottenham too in our 2-0 win!
Not only this, but both players are/were captains and boast a very intelligent football IQ (Lampard’s IQ is 150, one of the highest in football), therefore they even appear slightly similar personality wise.
And of course, both wear/wore the number 8!
To summarise; Martin Odegaard is neither De Bruyne nor Frank Lampard (two icons of the league), he is his own unique talented player and will need to massively improve to reach those heights.
Yet at 24, I do believe that will have a superb Arsenal career ahead of him. Of the two icons, I believe he is much closer to the iconic Chelsea goalscoring midfielder than to Manchester City’s master assister.
Until next time Gooners.
@benedict_hobbs
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