Martin Odegaard’s stellar performances significantly influence Arsenal’s success. Despite being just 23 years old, the Norwegian midfielder seamlessly adapted to Arsenal, becoming their top Premier League playmaker. His exceptional creativity and ingenuity have revitalized the club.
Despite registering five goals and three assists in 26 Premier League appearances, his influence transcends traditional metrics. Odegaard has become integral to Arsenal’s evolving mindset under manager Mikel Arteta. I can’t help but admire his commitment to both playmaking and defensive responsibilities, evident in his pressing and disruption of opponents’ build-up play.
Odegaard’s significance lies not only in his playmaking prowess but also in his defensive contributions. His pressing and ability to create scoring opportunities have been instrumental in Arteta’s tactics. Remarkably, he leads in chances created from open play across Europe’s top five leagues, showcasing his capacity to link play and deliver key passes.
🔐 Martin Ødegaard has created more chances from open play (43) than any other player in Europe's top five leagues this season pic.twitter.com/fXuEUytJiU
— WhoScored.com (@WhoScored) February 7, 2024
His vision and passing precision have significantly contributed to Arsenal’s resurgence. With Odegaard at the helm, Arsenal’s prospects in both the Champions League and the Premier League seem promising. While it’s debatable whether the Arsenal captain’s performance dictates the team’s success, there’s no denying Odegaard’s pivotal role in midfield.
Looking ahead, Arsenal fans can anticipate more memorable moments with Odegaard orchestrating plays from the heart of midfield.
He’s the man! I remember well how Arsenal fans were unimpressed that Arteta went back for the youngster at the end of his uneventful 6 month loan with the Gunners, but right now does anyone question that we got an unbelievable bargain when Arteta snatched him frm Real Madrid?
Jack Anderson
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An absolute steal at that price !
He is often the fulcrum of our attacks and moreover is always running around and pressing and geeing up the crowd
Have to say didn’t see this played when he first came on loan…. !
And seems a great lad too
Ddegaard who cost Arsenal £30m or so wasn’t a bargain signing by them when they signed him from Real Madrid.
But he looks to be a bargain buy now by Arsenal after they’ve developed him to become a top notch midfielder at the highest level of the game.
Although there are still 16 Epl matches left for him to play this season. Which if he ups his goals scoring ante to score more goals for Arsenal in the Epl before season’s end. He could still score more goals to equal or surpassed the 16 goals he scored for Arsenal last season. But if Arsenal had sold him last winter transfer window to say, Chelsea or Man Utd. They will not have gotten less than £60m for him but it can be more.
Why would the thought of selling Odegard come to your mind? – or should we as well plan to sell Saka for 100M and Martinelli for 80M in the summer?
@ SA
24 games played. There are 14 more EPL games to play.
To be really frank I do not mind if he does not score but continues to influence the results as he has done in the last 4 games as long as somebody else does the scoring.
His high-press alone is worth £30m, because we wouldn’t have made the opposition panic without it
If he wanted to break Fabregas’ or Ozil’s assist record at Arsenal, he could’ve lingered in the final-third to chase the assist stats. But our defense would suffer and Arteta wouldn’t like a non-counter-pressing creative AM or no 10
Unfortunately, his super-human stamina will gradually decline four years later, as happened to other workhorses like Okazaki, Ramsey and Kante
When that happens, someone else has to do the energy-taxing job and he might need to focus more on the creativity aspect of the game, as Messi did at Barcelona and his national team
It is only the finishing of our forwards which has kept him from topping the assist chart. All he can do is create chances and if our forward will be able to finish, those chances will be converted into assist. But hats off to Arteta where he has proven football is team game, unlike the later days of Wenger where there were individual brilliance and effectiveness but they were little disjointed collectively. But in this Arteta system everybody seems to fit in the system and the collective nature of the game has enhanced each players ability and productivity and ofcouse Odegard is the centre of this collectiveness.
Yes. Arsenal are challenging Man City and Liverpool for the EPL title, despite having no Gunners in the top five of goal and assist charts
The player stats show that Arteta has made Arsenal less predictable and more cohesive as a team
GAI Saka is third for most assists in the league! And just one goal less than the guy in 5th place for goals.
Maybe he isn’t listed on Google because there are three other EPL players with the same number of assists
@Gai and talking of defenders we may not have the best in the league but do we have any better pairing than in Epl than Saliba and Gabriel?
Considering we don’t have topCF the coach has done well for the unpredictability and cohesiveness of the team.
I believe our CBs are one of the best in EPL and they’re also productive in set-pieces
Captain fantastic!!!
He showed lots of promise earlier in his young career, may have held back at the Bernabeu, once on loaned at Real Sociedad, he was so effective to the point Madrid abruptly end the loan fearing strengthening arrival club.
His pressing at times is relentless and his mannerisms fits the profile of the club captain, though Rice is right on his shoulders for that coveted arm band
Yes if you compare with what we paid for Harvertz. He was undervalued by Real Madrid
A tactical tweak I wanted and observed in the WH game is that there was much more interplay in the forward line. MO8 had more freedom to be literally everywhere (dropping deep to progress play like a 4, popping up on the left a couple of times, and playing more centrally at times) instead of just the right side 8 position and it massively increased his effectiveness and influence on the game. He’s an amazing player certainly with much more to his game than we bargained for.
Glad to have been one of the gunners to spot the lads potential off the first loan spell i celebrated when wd bought him and for only 30m. A similar thing is how some goonerz up till now are failing to see the work kai does for the team off the ball. They think its all about goals and assists.
Odegaard is a big bargain for sure
He is a better player than Ozil
A lot of gooners didn’t want Arteta to sign him. Why? Because the English media (Nagging as usual) said he would come to block the growth of their own (Smith Rowe). The same thing they are saying about Raya and their own (Ramsdale). And I don’t know Arsenal fans listen to them.
And by the way, this is a similar story to Havertz. He will prove them wrong
*** And I don’t know WHY
Better than the later years of Ozil but not better than prime Ozil. Prime Ozil at Real Madrid was sublime and joy to watch but prime Ozil will not be a good fit in this team like odegaard is. Odegaard is on a good trajectory and he could possible eclipse prime Ozil.
Agree with your last paragraph Jack.
There was so much anti Arteta content on JA during that period, Odegaard got caught up in the flack as well.
He has been an outstanding player and deserves all the plaudits he is getting. The club is slowly but surely getting back to where we want it to be, with other signings that will make a similar difference. It’s not always easy to walk into a club and go at it, all guns blazing. Odegaard didn’t but had the potential to shine. Rice has seamlessly made the transition.
Arteta knew that odegard was that good.He pretended not to.Anytimw Odegard was doing well in a match he would like guy you are not following the script. Don’t you want Madrid to sell you.It was so Obvious I laughed when he went to buy as soon as he could.Go and watch his loan matches carefully you will laugh too.
The thing about those “chances created” stats is that they don’t indicate the quality of the chances created; something that always stuck out to me with fabregas was that he played people through 1v1 so often, it wasn’t just stat padding. I’ve mentioned in the past (about a year ago, probably) that I didn’t think odegaard was incisive enough compared to players like fabregas or debruyne – it was more that he was good at keeping the ball in tight areas in and around the box, than it was him opening teams up – but I do see a lot more incisiveness in his play now. He’s more often making really good chances, so I take the stat quite seriously.
He’s made clear statements in the past about wanting to keep improving, and I don’t think I’ve seen someone so noticeably getting better and better year by year. If he keeps working on his shooting, he can easily get 20 league goals in a season, imo (and if the others work on their shooting, he might get 20 assists as well!).
I was one of those who questioned Odegaard and so pleased to admit how wrong I was.
He is probably MA’s best signing £ for £ and he never forgets to get the fans involved at the beginning, during and end of games.
Just simply a great signing.
I like Odegaard immensely and havedone ever since he signed. But I have to query what “he has made 43 chances” actually means”!
Are we supposed to blindly assume ALL CHANCES are of exactly EQUAL worth ? Surely that is not true!
Before accepting meaningless words like “chances, ” which come with no defintion of what each individual chance actually was, I , for just one, want and would ask HOW MUCH LIKELIHOOD did each chance have of being a goal scored and which were , for example, just passes or crosses in to a dangerous goala scoring area without being, say, open goals where another team mate missed a sitter.
This is precisely the true problem I , ANDOTHERS TOO, HAVE WITH BALD STATS that do not give individual context.
Many CB’s, including out own SALIBA and also MERTESACKER a few years ago , were regularly among the top Prem percentage accurate passers according to weekly stats. But NO MENTION was ever made of the fact that a great majority were simple, no danger, no distance passes to their partner CB in their own half and back again, ad nauseum too in the case of MERTS WITH KOSCIELNY!
Stats with NO true context are, virtually,a WASTE OF TIME, MY THINKING FELLOW GOONERS.
The above is not in ANY WAY to diss either the admirable Odegaard or the world class SALIBA
It is simply designed to persuade some fans toTHINK before blithely trotting out unthought through stats.
This is why they’ve come up with equivalent xG value for assists (xGA?), because it’s a better measure of the quality of the chances created, not just the raw numbers (I think it considers where the shot was taken from, or where the pass was received on the pitch – even that might not be perfect a perfect measure, but certainly better than “chances created”). I’d be interested to see how odegaard’s xGA(?) has changed over time; I’ll bet it is higher this season than last and compares favourably to the rest of the league.
DAVI even XG is not much better, IF any!
We scored six goals against West Ham, COULD AND OUGHT TO HAVE SCORED SEVERAL MORE AND WOULD HAVE HAD,IF THOSE 68 MINUTE SUBS NOT HAPPENED.
BUT WE WER AWARDED ONLY 3.66 by that XG stats Meaningless ,or virtually so, in reality. And I HAVE NEVER SEEN INDIVIDUAL PLAYER XG given anyway\!
After his loan spell with Arsenal, it was clear that he was Arteta’s no.1 transfer target. Arteta must have seen enough of him to recognize the potential genius there.
One of the priorities in the summermust be to find acapable deputy for Odegaard. ESR who most of hoped would fit that bill doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to leave the treatment room. And I don’t think we should continue to wait for him
I’m looking at a player like Morgan Gibbs-White of Forest. I rate the boy, and he is home-grown.
I didnt think he was captain material but he IS. I just now think Rice would be an even better upgrade. But thats a situation that isn’t gojng to happen while both are still here.