Despite what people say about Mikel Arteta’s management skills, it would appear that the Arsenal coach, along with Edu, have made some excellent talented and youthful buys in the summer transfer window. Arteta said at the end that the project was only half complete and his aim was to have two top class players for every position.
He has certainly done that with Tierney and Tavares, and despite early reservations, it now seems that Martin Odegaard is making a name for himself as a serious challenger for our young Number 10, Emile Smith-Rowe.
He has now scored in 3 of our last four games, and when the Norwegian was replaced by Smith-Rowe in the West Ham win, it was ESR that made his claim by scoring the decisive goal near the end.
It was Odegaard’s birthday yesterday, and Arteta could not have praised his protogee any higher than he did, when he told Arsenal.com: “He’s very, very young but he’s already had a lot of experience in different clubs, in international football,”
“I agree that in the last few weeks he’s getting very close to his best level.
“The ceiling for him, I don’t know where it is, with the talent that he has, the desire that he has, how much he wants to always improve and get better. We’ve got a tremendous player there.
“He is a natural leader. If you look for the perfect professional, he wouldn’t be very far from that.”
It is a great problem for ARteta to have, but it can’t be easy for him to decide who is first-choice at the moment. Yes Odegaard is scoring at the moment, but Smith-Rowe is far away our top scorer in this campaign with 7 goals, so must be hard to leave on the bench.
If you were Arteta, who would you choose to start? Or could they possibly play together?