Captain Odegaard’s Course Ahead
Odegaard is back in business, and so are Arsenal.
This is a guest article by Chirag Sharatkumar. Subscribe to Sideline Stories.
They say a good captain senses the storm before it breaks. Martin Odegaard might have sensed it but being sidelined with injury for two months meant there wasn’t much he could do. Until now.
The Arsenal captain made his full return to the starting line-up just before the November international break. His first game back — a laboured draw at Stamford Bridge against Chelsea — was more a tentative step than a triumphant march and understandably so. Two months out with an ankle ligament injury can do that to you.
Since the break, though, Arsenal have been in scintillating form, winning all three of their games and in some style. The tide turned, the rhythm returned, and the Gunners began sailing again.
They put three past Nottingham Forest with ease, turned the Alvalade fortress into a playground and ran riot over Sporting with five, and then made West Ham’s defence look no more effective than a pile of training cones by netting five inside just 45 minutes over the weekend.
And like any good captain, Odegaard has been the difference maker. The Norweigan’s importance to Arsenal has often been overstated and done so at the expense of some of their other players, to the point where the team has become a reflection of just him.
To clear it up: Arsenal are not a one-man team. They never have been.
They are a collective made up of some of the finest players in the world on form, including Bukayo Saka, Kai Havertz, William Saliba, Gabriel, Jurrien Timber, and Declan Rice.
But even the best crews need a captain. Someone to steer the ship, to set the course, to hold steady when the waters grow rough. And there is something about him that enables this. It’s not just his immaculate touch or extraordinary vision. And it’s not even the chances he creates or the goals he scores.
There is a deeper presence, a quiet gravity that shifts the game around him. Arsenal had perhaps felt the absence of that gravity a little too much in the time he was out.
In the seven Premier League games that Odegaard missed, they collected just 11 points, with poor outings in defeats to Newcastle and Bournemouth, and tough draws with Manchester City and Liverpool. It wasn’t a collapse, not by any means, but it wasn’t the Arsenal we’ve come to expect either.
They looked disjointed, erratic, unsure of themselves. Odegaard’s attendance, had he been fit, may not have changed those results, but it would have changed the impact. Arsenal would have looked better sooner. They would have played better too.
Because that’s what Odegaard does. He is not some miraculous saviour who descends from the heavens to rescue them from the depths and despair of fourth place. But he is very good, a conduit for everything Mikel Arteta did on the pitch and wants off it.
There is something simpler, and perhaps deeper to Odegaard’s importance. He makes football easier for Arteta to manage and he makes it easier for Arsenal to play. His teammates are not just better with him; they are better because of him.
Partly because he is simply on the pitch, armband wrapped on his sleeve, directing play, conducting traffic, leading the press, leading, period. Partly because he is there, offering help and shouting instructions to his teammates. And partly also because what Odegaard brings is a sense of calm, not just on the ball, but perhaps in everyone’s minds too.
After the West Ham game, Arteta was asked about Arsenal’s confident performance. “We’ve got some momentum. I think we have some flow back. A real determination winning three consecutive meetings against three opponents,” he said.
Arsenal’s “flow,” as Arteta characterised it, had deserted them coincidentally right around the time Odegaard got injured. And now that he is back, it seems so too is the “flow.”
But what is this flow? Arsenal are still a good football team without Odegaard, and the hours of intensive training, the rigorous tactical ideas imparted, and the confidence built up from the process finally yielding positive results as it has over the past two seasons exist even without him.
It would be unfair to pin all of Arsenal’s success on Odegaard. But the facts don’t lie. Tactically, perhaps the simplest answer is the correct one. Odegaard almost always offers an out ball; the safe pass you make when the pressure is high, but also the boring pass you make for the exciting pass he makes.
When Arsenal build from the back, Odegaard drops deep to offer a passing option and to drag markers out of position. When he gets the ball, he progresses it up the field either with a drive through midfield or a line-breaking pass into the half-spaces. And in the final third, his combinations with Saka have come to feel almost inevitable, every touch, every pass made with such confidence, such trickery, almost as if they’re giving you a teaser of the celebration for the goal that’s most definitely coming.
In the first half alone against West Ham, Odegaard and Saka had exchanged 60 touches and one penalty between them. A real Henry-Pires relationship developing here it seems. By the end of the match, Arsenal had registered 13 goals in their last three games, which is 12 more than they had in their three previous games. Of these 13, nine of them were either scored or assisted by Odegaard and Saka.
This is no coincidence. Perhaps on a subconscious level, the team just clicks more when he’s there; the flow flows, the press presses, the unit performs. Defenders seem more composed. Midfielders, more assured. Forwards, more daring. Perhaps it’s the comfort or confidence that comes from a player who can control the pace of the game. Or maybe it’s just more trust. In him, of course, but also in each other. And then finally in themselves.
This Arsenal squad is very good, even without Odegaard. But like any team and their talisman, they’re better with him. He may not be their best player, but he’s quickly become their most important. Not only for his vision, energy, or creativity, but simply for his presence.
But smooth seas do not make skilful sailors, and the course Arsenal have charted will not be easy. There is a nine-point gap between them and table-toppers Liverpool to surmount, not to mention the imminent but recently unlikely threat of their white whale, Manchester City. Their Champions League run seems kinder, but the journey will be challenging nonetheless.
For now, Odegaard is back, and how. Look at him, he is the Captain now. Captain of his soul, master of his fate, and Arsenal’s too it might appear. But he is here and he is leading. For the Gunners, perhaps that is all that matters.