Although Aston Villa didn’t score the all-important goal that claimed all three points against Arsenal on Sunday until the 84th minute, defeat for Mikel Arteta’s side seemed all but confirmed when Martin Odegaard walked off the pitch five minutes earlier to be substituted by Emile Smith Rowe. It was at that point that fans of the North London club probably realised that they weren’t going to win that game and, as a result, may have now lost this season’s Premier League title race.
That may seem like a bit of an overreaction - after all, there’s every chance Arsenal could still catch Manchester City - but what intrigues me the most is how much this team’s success has become tethered to the performances of the aforementioned Norwegian midfielder. Arteta’s side are one of the best teams in Europe, but also seem remarkably reliant on Odegaard as their sole playmaker. And that 2-0 defeat to Aston Villa wasn’t the first example of this peculiar bottleneck in innovation at the heart of Arsenal’s midfield.
This unquenchable demand for Odegaard to pull every string in Arsenal’s midfield was perhaps most evident in the club’s recent Champions League clash with Bayern. Over the course of the 2-2 draw with the German giants, Odegaard made more key passes than the rest of Arteta’s squad combined and had 85 touches of the ball, according to WhoScored. That’s more than any other player in the team besides the two central defenders, more than Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli’s combined touches and almost twice as many as fellow central midfielders Jorginho and Declan Rice.
Of course, that’s not a bad thing. Especially if it’s by design. But in some instances it can make Arsenal a little easier to play against if the opposing team knows that every attack must go via the left foot of Odegaard at some point. Villa obviously knew exactly how to exploit this on Sunday, with Odegaard getting dispossessed five times before he was pulled off by Arteta. That was more than any other Arsenal player on the day and clearly why the club struggled to get only four shots on target over the course of the game.
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And it’s not hard to see why Odegaard has grown into the role of Arteta’s trusted midfield playmaker. Once considered too lightweight for Real Madrid, the Norwegian talent has come on leaps and bounds over the course of the last three and a half seasons in North London and now stands tall as one of the most accomplished attacking midfielders in the Premier League.
Having missed just six games through injury since his first game for Arsenal back in January 2021, Odegaard has not only been an ever-present member of Mikel Arteta’s squad but over the course of the last three years has taken on more and more responsibility with each passing season. When we take a look at the numbers, we can see just how much progress Odegaard has really made in the Premier League in recent years. For example, when we look at the midfielders key passes per 90 - which are passes that led to a shot - we can see that they have steadily increased by 37% since the 20/21 season to where they now stand.
Equally, Odegaard’s passes into the penalty box per 90 minutes have also increased by an even more impressive 74% and his through balls per game have improved by more than five times since he first joined the club. All three of these metrics point to a player that is not only improving with each passing season, but also one that is thriving as a playmaker in the Premier League.
Indeed, when we take a look at this graph which shows passes into the penalty box and key passes per 90 minutes for all central midfielders in the Premier League this season, we can see that Odegaard currently averages more of the former than any other midfielder and is second only to Harvey Elliot for key passes - which is in itself a bit of a skewed comparison since he has often been played on the wing by Liverpool this season.
Either way, I think this graph does a good job of showing just how dominant Odegaard has been this season as a playmaker in the English top-flight and how lucky Arsenal are to have him at the peak of his powers. Especially when we compare the Norwegian player to Arsenal’s other creative players over the past few years.
In a sense, this now means that Arsenal’s greatest asset may also be their biggest vulnerability. This team that Arteta has built and got to the cusp of winning the Premier League is built on a solid foundation of Odegaard’s passes, through balls and assists. But that dependency on the Norwegian talent could now mean that opposing sides know exactly where to hurt Arsenal in key games. We won’t know for sure whether this will be enough to derail the club’s ambitions until the end of the season, but for now it’s certainly something to keep an eye on.
14 апр 2024
