Morning.
Mikel Arteta will meet the press this morning ahead of our trip to Nottingham Forest tomorrow night. He was visibly angry after the West Ham game on Saturday. Not for the first time as Arsenal manager it’s fair to say, but it was the first time in a long while – in no small part because we’ve generally been a team whose results and performances don’t elicit that kind of response.
It’ll be interesting to see what his mood is like today. I suspect some acknowledgement that while our title chances are now basically gone, the season isn’t over. Our chances of domestic success are over, but there are still 12 games to play, so the season is not – there is a distinction there. We have to win games, to secure Champions League football for next season, and there’s still Europe to contend with.
I don’t think we have any realistic chance of winning the Champions League, not with the problems we currently have, but as long as those games are there, they are important and could provide the team and fans with some big nights and excitement along the way. Perhaps slim pickings based on the hopes/expectations we had for this season, but you have to turn up and give 100% in every game between now and May. There’s no other way for the team and the manager to think about things.
As a fan, your mileage may vary, as they say. I’ve seen the full gamut of reaction online since Saturday, from rage and anger to resignation and regret. I’m not here to police anybody else, to tell them what they should think or how they feel about how this season has played out. As I’ve said here before, I think we got stuff wrong in the summer, the ripple effect has played out across this campaign, and it’s been compounded by some of the worst injury luck I’ve seen in years. Some of it was in our control, in terms of how we use certain players and the burden we place on them, but some of it was just a bit freakish.
I have sympathy with the injury situation, but much less sympathy for the position we have found ourselves in because of it. We had the opportunity in January to mitigate some of those absences and chose not to. That was a decision which backfired, and there’s no getting away from that – regardless of how difficult the market was last month. The club made that choice, and the consequences have been apparent on the pitch since.
Speaking of injury and burden on players, I really think some of the vitriol aimed towards Martin Odegaard has been over the top. I don’t think he’s playing anywhere near as well as he can – which is true of most of our players right now, by the way – but as captain I guess he’s seen to have some extra responsibility. Which is fair enough, that’s not an uncommon view.
Criticism of player performance comes with the territory, and I don’t think Odegaard has delivered enough this season, by his own high standards. For me though, that puts him in the same bracket as Declan Rice or Leandro Trossard or even Gabriel Martinelli, not out on his own. He got a bad injury early in the season, and since his return he’s played in almost every game, leading the press, with all those sprints that are required to do that. We ask him to be our chief creator, but also task him with a hugely demanding physical role in this team. Even in his first game back, he did 90+ minutes against Chelsea in a really tough game, and if people want to complain about the load or the minutes we put on other players, why is he exempt from this conversation?
Is he playing anywhere near his best? No. Clearly not. Do we have anyone else to play in his position? No. And therein lies the problem that merits more criticism than one individual losing form. Arsenal Football Club has one creative midfield player in the squad, and we have no choice but to play him into the ground. Last summer we chose to let two players leave – Emile Smith Rowe and Fabio Vieira – with the manager revealing those departures were to help create the pathway for Ethan Nwaneri.
Except, when Odegaard got injured, Mikel Arteta didn’t deem him ready to step in and fill that gap, so we muddled through. When the captain returned, we threw him right back into the deep end, with the manager still eschewing the young apprentice in that position. Now, Nwaneri has been pressed into action as Bukayo Saka’s replacement, and there is literally nobody else to play in Odegaard’s position. Thus, we keep playing him when ideally you might leave him out for a few games to change the dynamic, and perhaps give him a chance to take stock and go again.
I also don’t think it’s unreasonable to point out that a creative midfielder’s ability to be creative depends on the players he has ahead of him or around him. Without four of our main attackers, that’s likely part of the issue, although it’s fair to say we’ve seen Odegaard struggle a bit with some of those players in the team. Ultimately though, the problem for me is that the creative burden lies too heavily on the shoulders of one man. If he doesn’t shine, we have nobody else who can.
Odegaard has been brilliant for Arsenal, a gem of a signing, and the kind of player we need more of – not less. It’s sad to see him go through this run of form, because we all know he’s capable of better, but it’s even more sad to see some of the reaction to his performances because he deserves a bit more grace in my opinion. There’s little choice but to keep playing him, and hope he can rediscover some form, but I’m not on board with how he has been singled-out when others around him aren’t delivering either.
Right, I’ll leave it there for now – we recorded an Arsecast Extra last night which is available in all the usual podcast places, or you can listen below. We’ll bring you the press conference stories over on Arseblog News, and we’ll have a preview podcast on Patreon later on at some point too.
