How Arsenal's Martin Odegaard Destroyed Chelsea
Arsenal 5-0 Chelsea and Mikel Arteta's men look like taking the Premier League title race all the way to the wire. But while praise has been heaped upon Kai Havertz for his two goals against his former club, it was actually his captain who was the architect behind the Gunners emphatic victory over their London rivals.
Adam Clery looks at Martin Odegaard's performance, and his season in general, to make a case for him being the Premier League's Player of the Year.
Adam Clery looks at Martin Odegaard's performance, and his season in general, to make a case for him being the Premier League's Player of the Year.
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00:00 Alright then, so this was Arsenal last night. Here is our man in all of his glory. And not
00:06 to tell you too much about my life, but I live in North London now, really fancied a
00:10 pint after work, ended up in the faltering fullback, which is a famously Arsenal bar,
00:14 and spoke to people who were nervous.
00:17 Arsenal's last few performances have been a little...
00:20 And Chelsea against the big sides tends to be a bit...
00:23 But you needn't have worried because Michael Arteta had a plan and it worked absolutely
00:26 brilliantly.
00:27 And super duper simply was when Arsenal go to their 4-4-2, pressing shape, that's it
00:33 here with all of these players.
00:35 Instead of like squashing them up in their own box like they normally do, they just sat
00:40 off them.
00:41 They encouraged Chelsea to try and play through.
00:43 Whereas against like Bayern in particular, the quality of the player they were pressing
00:46 meant that this left them way too open by sitting off a bit and sort of denying any
00:51 room to like Galaga or Fernandes or Caicedo.
00:54 That forced Chelsea to try and do all their build up and all their playmaking with Badi
00:58 Schilly, Di Sarsi and Petrovic.
01:01 Three players who throughout this game looked about as comfortable on the ball as a monk
01:05 in a strip club.
01:06 And that forced them to keep going long or going wide where they kept losing the ball
01:10 and then to counter it, they started dropping Fernandes and Caicedo way deeper so they could
01:14 get on the ball, which is great.
01:16 But then they're trying to play into this press and this block into players like Jackson
01:21 and Mudrick who are no good receiving in these areas, so they kept losing the ball that way.
01:25 Yada, yada, yada.
01:26 That's how they set up.
01:27 That's why they looked so comfortable.
01:28 That's why Chelsea had more possession despite the scoreline.
01:32 That's not what we're here to talk about.
01:34 We're here and I'm going to do the Roger Stewart.
01:36 Boom!
01:37 For this man.
01:38 Now you may have seen the game.
01:39 You've probably seen the highlights.
01:41 Maybe you've seen some of the statistics.
01:42 Uruguay had an absolute blinder.
01:45 Now thanks to the magic little pixies at Opta, we know we created eight chances in this game,
01:50 which is not only a personal record for him.
01:52 Look, you can see them all here, but that is an absurd number of chances for one player
01:56 to create in a game of Premier League football.
01:59 Two of them ended up being assists.
02:00 You've got that unbelievable pass for Kai Havertz, which got him in and he scored from
02:04 that.
02:05 Then you've got the one over the top for Ben White, which I'm absolutely sure he meant
02:09 as a shot.
02:10 Why not?
02:11 We'll go with that.
02:12 But this, we want to look beyond this, right?
02:14 Because this only tells you half the story about his performance.
02:17 Because to me, the weird thing about how these stats in particular are recorded is that this
02:21 one here counts as a chance created, right?
02:24 I'll just show you exactly what happened.
02:26 He plays the ball to Trossard.
02:28 Nothing really happens.
02:30 There's not really much going on.
02:31 Trossard gets a shot blocked, but because he did get a shot, that counts as a chance
02:35 created, which looks great.
02:36 But this, which happens mere moments later and completely splits Chelsea's defence open,
02:42 doesn't count as a chance created because nobody got a shot away.
02:45 And this again, mere minutes later, doesn't count as a chance created, despite the fact
02:49 that Oedegaard spatchcocks Chelsea open like a delicious chicken.
02:54 Like, I'll just show you his heat map, right?
02:57 And this, to me, does not look like a player who's created a record number of chances and
03:01 absolutely dominated the game.
03:03 You'd expect him, when you're having like nearly 100 touches and breaking records for
03:07 chance creation, to be everywhere, to be constantly on the ball in your own half, to be floating
03:11 out to both flanks, to be wide, to be deep, to be in the box, everything.
03:15 And he's not.
03:16 He's so precise with what he's doing.
03:19 When he needs to get on the ball deep, he gets on the ball deep here.
03:22 He doesn't go wandering looking for it.
03:23 He just does it where he's needed.
03:25 And when he can get on the ball in the final third, he wants to do it specifically here.
03:29 He's not going looking.
03:30 And it's this right here that I think demonstrates like what makes Oedegaard such a unique player,
03:36 such a special player, right?
03:37 Because this is a heat map of someone not going looking for space.
03:41 And yet when he has the ball, it always feels like he has so much of it.
03:45 He has this like freakish ability to sort of slow down time around him so he can move
03:51 quicker than everybody else.
03:52 But at the same time, speed time up in his head so he can see play developing in a way
03:57 that nobody else can.
03:59 And you saw this last night against Chelsea.
04:01 And if you've been paying attention, you've been seeing it all season, right?
04:04 But Oedegaard, when he gets on the ball in good positions, right, he delays and delays
04:09 and delays his pass to the point that good chances wither and die.
04:14 But great chances suddenly out of nowhere just appear.
04:18 It's 1-0.
04:19 Tomi Ass has got the ball down the left hand side.
04:21 Oedegaard arrives into the final third screaming for this pass.
04:24 But the ball is sadly fractionally behind him.
04:26 So he's got to turn his body to receive it.
04:28 And as an aside here, shows great strength in barging Fernandes off the ball to make
04:33 sure he retains it.
04:34 Problem now, though, is because the pass wasn't great.
04:36 He's now got his back to goal.
04:38 But thankfully, Arsenal are on the counterattack here.
04:40 He's got loads of good options.
04:42 Now, I think the good players in this scenario give a really perfectly weighted ball back
04:47 to Declan Rice, who is asking for it.
04:49 He can get a shot away.
04:50 He can drive into the box.
04:52 That's probably the best option.
04:54 Probably see this movement from Ben White on the far side.
04:58 And as the Chelsea defence sort of narrow around him to tighten the net, roll it across
05:02 to the opposite flank to completely open things up.
05:05 But Oedegaard, he does not do either of these things.
05:09 He delays and delays and delays his pass to the point that these two good chances both
05:14 wither and die.
05:15 And then suddenly, out of nowhere, with his vision and his close control, he creates a
05:21 great chance.
05:22 He somehow manages to get turned.
05:24 He somehow sees Alfa Gilchrist coming in and skips past him.
05:27 And now, all of a sudden, he can roll Tom Iassu in to get one across the face of goal.
05:33 That's why I said you've got to look past the stats for this, because that does not
05:36 go down as a chance created, even though he is 100% responsible for creating that chance.
05:43 Few minutes later, Bakaio Saka has got the ball down the right-hand side, gives it to
05:46 Oedegaard in a position where he can't really do anything about it.
05:50 So he gets the ball under control, shields it with his body, stops Chelsea taking it
05:53 off him and assesses his options.
05:56 You can see he's got Ben White here, who he could roll the ball back to.
05:58 He could put a cross into the box.
05:59 That's actually a pretty good option.
06:01 He could get the ball to Thomas Partey.
06:02 That's an easy pass.
06:03 He could then recycle it round to the opposite side.
06:05 They could start again.
06:06 Again, that's a good option.
06:08 But again, Martin Oedegaard does not do either of these things.
06:11 He manages to get himself a little bit of space.
06:12 He gets turned.
06:13 He faces up Chelsea's defence.
06:15 He's now looking in the direction he really wants to play the ball.
06:18 And as he's doing so, this gap opens up to Saka.
06:22 Now, Saka would have a lot of work to do here.
06:24 Don't get me wrong.
06:25 You'd have to drop a shoulder.
06:26 You'd have to do something a little bit clever, but it's still a good chance to give your
06:29 team-mate.
06:30 But Oedegaard delays.
06:31 And he delays and he delays and he delays.
06:35 And that good chance for Saka suddenly becomes a great chance.
06:39 Instead of giving him a good pass with his back to goal, he waits long enough, draws
06:43 Chelsea's defenders towards him because he's got the ball, he's the danger, and then slips
06:47 him in behind the defence.
06:49 Now, we need to stress here, a lot of really good players make these exact passes.
06:53 It's not that he's doing things that other players can't do, but they make them when
06:57 they're on.
06:58 They make them when they're obvious.
07:00 Oedegaard's composure and his ability to delay the pass often just creates them out of nothing.
07:05 And I think that is genuinely a trait unique to him.
07:09 Just go to any Arsenal match you want.
07:11 He isn't doing it against West Ham when they got beat that time.
07:13 He's got it.
07:14 This is an option.
07:15 This is an option.
07:16 This is an option.
07:17 But he delays, he delays, he delays.
07:18 Then all of a sudden, a great option appears and Arsenal should score from that.
07:23 And the thing is, even when he's not doing that delay trick, he does just seem to see
07:27 things that other players just rarely ever do.
07:30 Like in the second half, he gets the ball back from Whitey.
07:32 There's a million options.
07:33 Like Gabriel's screaming for it.
07:35 He could go all the way across to Tomi Asu.
07:36 Parties there.
07:37 He could go into Saka's feet and try and play a 1-2.
07:40 But no, somehow he sees this space and he sees this run and he waits perfectly to put
07:47 Kai Havertz in.
07:48 Like if you showed this freeze frame to anyone and said, "Can you tell me who the next Arsenal
07:52 player to receive this ball is?"
07:54 Like, Trossard's bottom of the list because he's offside.
07:56 But after that, your last guess would be Kai Havertz, let alone that he should score from
08:01 it.
08:02 And the thing as well is that even when the pass is incredibly obvious, even when you
08:05 can see exactly what he's going to do, he's so technically ruthless is probably the word,
08:11 that he can make scenarios just undefendable.
08:14 Like I think every single player in this scenario would want to play that exact pass.
08:18 But so many of them would have it cut out by the first defender or go too long with
08:22 it so Havertz has to run away from the goal.
08:24 Instead, Udagar does it so perfectly that it's not close enough to the goalkeeper that
08:28 he can sweep it out.
08:29 And by the time it gets into the area in front of Havertz, it's almost stopped completely
08:34 dead so he can take it in whatever direction he needs to.
08:38 Like it looks like an obvious thing, but Kukere has not lost him here.
08:41 Havertz isn't actually in any space.
08:43 That ball needs to be almost completely dead so he can take it away from the defender and
08:48 get his shot away.
08:49 Like too much power, slightly wrong direction, that isn't actually a chance.
08:53 Now that's all great, isn't it?
08:55 What a great performance.
08:56 I think he got like a 9.9 on sofa score, which I haven't seen like all season.
09:00 But the thing is, it's not about last night.
09:02 Like I said at the start of the video, I think he should be player of the year.
09:05 And it's not because he just absolutely thumbed Chelsea.
09:09 It's because he's been doing this all season.
09:11 Like in its most simple terms, he is the leading chance creator in the Premier League this
09:15 season.
09:16 And they've got the best goal difference.
09:18 They've scored the most goals.
09:19 They've been the best attacking side.
09:21 And they've done so, as we've talked about numerous times, without an out and out centre
09:25 forward.
09:26 And I know that having like only eight assists sounds a bit weird, given he's supposed to
09:30 be so important to this great attacking side.
09:32 But as you've seen in this video, it's not necessarily about him dropping the ball on
09:37 a plate for a teammate over and over and over.
09:39 He is involved in every single attacking move, whether he starts it deep or he finishes it
09:45 in the final third.
09:46 He might not get the assist, but he's always involved.
09:49 And the thing is, if we look at his FB ref profile, specifically his passing numbers,
09:53 that's probably a little bit underwhelming as well, right?
09:55 You'd expect him to be scoring really high in the league for short, medium, long passes,
10:00 getting on the ball, getting all these touches.
10:03 You'd expect him to sort of have like Kevin De Bruyne style numbers.
10:06 But if you look past the numbers that are just passes for passes sake and start to look
10:10 at the metrics that really hurt teams and really make things happen, he is peerless.
10:16 He is the Premier League's number one for shot creating actions this season.
10:21 So that's whatever it is, be it a tackle or a pass or a shot itself or just getting fouled.
10:26 Anything that leads directly to your teammate getting a go on goal.
10:30 He's doing that five or six times every single game.
10:34 Passes into the penalty area, which is obviously the one thing that terrifies the opposition.
10:37 He does that three or four times in the top 1% for it.
10:41 Key passes as well, which are the ones that if your mate can just stick it in the back
10:44 of the net would give you an assist like the direct pass before a shot.
10:47 He's doing that two and three times every single match on average.
10:50 And this is the one where you can see the vision as well through balls.
10:53 So a pass between the opposition defenders into the space behind him, specifically the
10:58 one thing teams are trying to stop Arsenal doing.
11:01 He does every single game like truly, genuinely, honestly, right.
11:05 I think between his vision, his composure, his positioning and his technique, he is for
11:10 me the most dangerous on the ball player in the Premier League.
11:16 But there is one other reason for which I absolutely adore him.
11:20 And I'm going to show it to you now.
11:22 Now this made to the untrained eye just look like a bit of headless chicken.
11:26 Ning Ning Odegaard is chasing round Chelsea's players.
11:29 He's determined to win that ball back.
11:31 He's trying to press them, force a turnover so they can get a chance out of it.
11:34 But he doesn't do it.
11:35 I'm actually showing you a fail.
11:36 Why am I showing you that?
11:38 Well, let's zoom out ever so slightly, shall we?
11:42 You see, it is the 85th minute.
11:45 Arsenal are 5-0 up.
11:47 There is no need for him to be doing this whatsoever.
11:50 He could be sitting on the ground for all it would matter at this stage of the game.
11:53 But he still has that determination to work hard for his team and to try and make things
12:00 happen.
12:01 And this from a man, let's not forget, who has not really had a break in this Arsenal
12:05 side this season.
12:06 He has played every game on average 88 minutes.
12:09 In fact, he has the third most minutes of any Arsenal player this season.
12:14 And given that the other two, you could argue, have far more like static roles in the side,
12:19 Saliba especially, I know Rice gets up and down.
12:21 Odegaard's job is to not only get on the ball deep, but to lead the press.
12:25 He's up and down all game and he's still doing that in the 85th minute when they're 5-0 up.
12:32 And the reason I'm pointing that out isn't just to give him a round of applause or pat
12:34 on the back or, "Oh, look, doesn't he work so hard?"
12:36 This is intrinsic to how Arsenal play football.
12:39 They are a high pressing team.
12:41 They do not give you time on the ball.
12:43 And if we look at these numbers here, in terms of high turnovers, they rank very highly.
12:48 But why Odegaard is so important is if you just look at this graph next to it, when it
12:52 comes to turning those high turnovers into actual chances, Arsenal are clear of every
12:59 other team in the league.
13:00 That's because in those crazy, frenetic situations where the ball's just been turned over, there's
13:04 no set pattern of play, nobody really knows what to do.
13:07 The difference between Arsenal and every other side in this league is that they have Martin
13:12 Odegaard, who sees things other players don't see, who doesn't rush himself, who delays
13:17 until a chance comes about.
13:19 Arsenal are the most effective team at turning high turnovers into chances because of him.
13:26 And that, combined with everything else you've seen in this video, is why I think Martin
13:29 Odegaard should be the Premier League Player of the Year.
13:32 He's been all season absolutely 'Utmerkett'.
13:37 That means excellent.
13:38 But yes, as I always say in these things, it's just my opinion.
13:40 I mean, you've probably got one of your own, so please let me know it in the comments below.
13:43 Is Odegaard that important to Arsenal?
13:45 Do you think they can still win the league?
13:47 Who should be Premier League Player of the Year?
13:48 There's been shouts for like, Palmer, Van Dijk.
13:53 You can, of course, always get me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, whatever they're all called.
13:58 @AdamCleary, C-L-E-R-Y, the 442 sources in the corner of the video.
14:01 Oh my God, Arsenal fans, would you look at that?
14:04 It's only an invincible issue of the magazine.
14:06 You're going to want to pick that up at all good retailers and the bad ones as well.
14:10 Newsletter, you can subscribe to that in the comments below.
14:12 And I think that's it.
14:13 Yeah, just about to go off now and start my #Urdy4Potty Player of the Year 2024.
14:21 It needs work.
14:22 It does need work, but I'll do that.
14:25 Bye.