Good morning.
Arsenal yesterday completed the loan signing of Norwegian international Martin Odegaard from Real Madrid. The 22 year old will spend the rest of the season with us, and will add quality and creativity to our midfield.
Let’s do some quotes first. Mikel Arteta says:
It’s great that we’ve secured Martin to come to us until the end of the season. Martin is of course a player that we all know very well and although still young, he has been playing at the top level for a while. Martin will provide us with quality offensive options and we’re all excited to be integrating him into our plans between now and May.
While the player himself says:
Everything here just seems good. I like the club and I always liked the way that the club wants to play. Everything about the club and now how the manager wants to play, I think it’s a club that really suits me well. So I think it’s a good match.
A phone call from the manager helped persuade him, which demonstrates some solid persuasiveness, but Arsenal as a club have been interested in him since his teenage years. He visited us when doing the rounds as a 15 year old, but in the end plumped for Real Madrid. It’s easy enough to understand why.
In terms of the kind of player we could have brought in this month, during what remains a very difficult transfer market for all the reasons we’re well aware of, this is a genuinely exciting piece of business by the club. I know he hasn’t played a great deal for Real Madrid this season, but he had an exceptional loan spell with Real Sociedad last season, and a very good one with Vitesse the year before.
When I thought about the way we might address the creative midfield issue this month, I never envisaged a signing like this. I didn’t think we’d go out and spend big in January, so I figured we might get some kind of grizzled veteran on loan, but not someone with this level of potential.
Yes, there are caveats – like there are in every transfer. There have to be some match-fitness concerns given how little playing time he’s had, but the flip side is that you’ve got someone with fresh legs in the second half of a gruelling season. He spent yesterday training with Dani Ceballos and Kieran Tierney, two players sidelined with minor injuries at the moment, but is expected to work with the first team from today. Whether he’s ready enough to play some part at the weekend remains to be seen, but if not there’s still a lot of football between now and May.
In terms of his role in the team, the most obvious one is that he provides competition/cover for Emile Smith Rowe who has become so important to how the side functions at the moment. Odegaard very naturally fits into that role, although he and Smith Rowe are not exactly like for like in terms of their playing styles (which I think is useful actually, adding variety to our creativity is not bad thing at all). I don’t think it’s simply a case of either/or with those two though, there are ways they could play together too.
A few weeks back, Arteta gave an interview talking about how his desire was to play a 4-3-3, but without the players of the right profile, it was difficult to do that. Odegaard is certainly someone who could go some way to making that possible (albeit it’d be difficult to implement in the short spell we’ll likely have him for), and what he brings in terms of passing range is mouth-watering.
I mean, can you imagine how much the likes of Kieran Tierney, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Gabriel Martinelli might relish the idea of a player who can find them with a pass like this wonderful assist for Real Sociedad last season? For players who want to overlap/drift into more central attacking channels from the left hand side, this kind of vision is a godsend.
He’s got something to prove too. His Real Madrid future isn’t exactly certain, and he’s at an age where he can’t spend half a season flitting in and out of a side. Obviously it’s way too early to start talking about making this a permanent deal, we need to see how he performs, but performing well for us will certainly strengthen his position over staking a claim if he returns to the Bernebeu, convince Arsenal to try and sign him, or generate interest if he sees his future elsewhere. Perhaps some aren’t comfortable with the idea of Arsenal being a club which gives him a platform like that, but I don’t see an issue with it. Even if it only benefits us in the short-term, there’s sufficient upside for us during what remains of this season.
All in all, a genuinely exciting signing in a difficult market, and hopefully he can get up to speed quickly and start contributing. If you’re looking for a bit more Ogegaard in your morning, here’s some extra recommended reading/viewing.
1 – A Martin Odegaard profile piece from Phil Costa (@_philcosta), giving some background on the player, his career to date, his playing style, and lots more.
2 – Martin Odegaard – Data Viz: A really lovely look at the player from a statistical point of view by Jon Ollington (@jonollington), with very swish graphics.
3 – Sid Lowe for the Guardian (@sidlowe) – “Until lockdown I think you could make an argument for saying Martin Odegaard was the best player in the whole of La Liga”
Mikel Arteta meets the press this morning, so it’ll be interesting to see what else he has to say about the new signing. We’ll report on that over on Arseblog News.
A final bit of extra reading for you now, Lewis Ambrose (@LGAmbrose) analyses our 3-1 win over Southampton in the latest tactics column. This is a superb piece, and well worth your time this morning.
Right, I’ll leave it there for now, but I’ll be back tomorrow with more and, of course, a brand new Arsecast.
Until then, take it easy.
