Arsenal confirm MCL injury for Martin Odegaard

Morning.

We start the week and the Interlull on top of the Premier League, but there’s also a bit of bad news to kick off today with after Arsenal released an update on Martin Odegaard. He had a clash of knees in the 2-0 win over West Ham on Saturday, and has suffered damage to his medial collateral ligament.

The club say:

Martin Odegaard has been withdrawn from the Norway national team for their upcoming matches against Israel and New Zealand after sustaining a medial collateral ligament injury to his left knee during the first half in Saturday’s win over West Ham United.

Martin will continue to be assessed and treated by our medical team at Sobha Realty Training Centre during the international window, with the aim of a return to action as soon as possible.

Obviously that’s not good news, but it’s also not as bad as it might have been. The time out depends on the grade of the issue, and at this point we’re not clear on that. It could be just a few weeks, it could be quite a bit longer if he requires surgery, so let’s keep fingers crossed it’s the former rather than the latter. My hope is that the fact he was able to at least try and stay on was because it wasn’t as serious as it could have been, but perhaps adrenaline and a will to carry on might offset that a bit. Let’s see.

It’s been a nightmare start to the season for the captain who twice had to come off injured in previous home Premier League games with a shoulder injury before picking up this latest problem on Saturday. I guess it is a real illustration of how strong our squad is that we are in that position when our captain has completed 90 minutes just once so far in the Premier League; Bukayo Saka has done that just twice; and players like Kai Havertz and Ben White – important cogs in Mikel Arteta’s machine – have just 100 minutes combined, and those came in the same game on the opening weekend against Man Utd.

I know nobody particularly enjoyed last season, but I do think it has possibly ingrained in us an ability to cope with absences that ordinarily we wouldn’t have. Adding real depth this summer has been a big part of that, obviously, but I believe there’s something psychological about it too. Don’t get me wrong, we miss these players and their absences are a blow, but with that depth and the experience of last season, it doesn’t feel like a hammer blow each time it happens.

What I would say though is that I really want it to stop happening. Arteta was quite interesting on the topic of injuries before the West Ham game, talking about how many factors can play a part in what happens – with poor old Emile Smith Rowe caught in the crossfire a little! But with something like the Odegaard situation on Saturday, that’s just pure bad luck.

Anyone who has played football will have experienced that knee on knee clash at some point, and it’s usually really, really painful. Typically though, that’s all it is, but in this case he’s suffered some real damage. I went back to have a look at it, and it does seem as if the contact is the front of Crysencio Summerville’s knee to the side of his, and that’s why he came off the worst.

Anyway, the good thing is that we have the options to live without Odegaard for a while, with Eberechi Eze, Ethan Nwaneri and Mikel Merino candidates to stand-in depending on who we’re playing or the game-state, but the sooner we have him back the better. The performance against Olympiacos felt like someone determined to make up for lost time, but unfortunately there’ll be more of that when he does make his eventual return. Let’s wish him a speedy recovery.

Right, I’ll leave it there this morning. We’ll have an Arsecast Extra for you later this afternoon. Keep an eye out for the call for questions on BlueSky @gunnerblog.bsky.social and @arseblog.com with the hashtag #arsecastextra – or if you’re an Arseblog Member on Patreon, leave your question in the #arsecast-extra-questions channel on our Discord server. Pod should be out around 5pm or so.

In the meantime, we’ll have an Arsenal Women Arsecast out this morning, and an episode of The 30 over on Patreon, recapping all the weekend’s Premier League action.

For now, have a good one.