That second half appearance against Palace in midweek was a proper captain’s performance from Martin Ødegaard.
There was a few voices of frustration directed towards our skipper in the consecutive draws against Fulham and Everton recently and it wasn’t without merit either, the Norwegian international was certainly off the pace in those two clashes.
But against Crystal Palace recently, he reminded the few complainers of his utter importance to the club, not that he needed to anyway. There was a reason we struggled immensely in the three months he was injured this campaign, he is our orchestrator in chief, providing a solid platform for Saka and our attack in general to feed off.
Arsenal v Crystal Palace
(Photo by Alex Pantling/Getty Images)
He showed just this in his second half showing against Palace. In a game where we fairly struggled to create in the first half, it was the introduction of our skipper that provided the catalyst for a win, and he didn’t even start the game. Along with his two assists, he also had an impressive passing accuracy of 91 per cent, two successful dribbles, three chances created and four recoveries in what was a stellar captain’s performance.
What the aforementioned statistics won’t tell you is the amount of times he found his teammates in space with a line breaking pass, we were lacking this in the two previous games in the PL, and I’m so glad we got to see our most creative player knitting together those sort of passes.
More tougher tests will come, even our next tie against the very same opponent won’t be easy at Selhurst park but we’ll be rest assured that our captain is in top form because when he clicks, the team clicks!
BENJAMIN KENNETH
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