Before every game at Emirates Stadium, Martin Odegaard lifts the lid on the mood in the camp via his captain’s notes published in the matchday programme.
Ahead of tonight's encounter with Fulham, the skipper discusses his time away with Norway, seeing some familiar faces when the Cottagers arrive, and the dad's group that's growing at the club! Here is a snippet:
It’s great to be back after a good international break and we’re all now fully fired up for the last two months of the season.
Personally, I think it was a really, really good camp for Norway. We started the World Cup qualification with two big wins over Moldova and Israel – both in away games – so that’s great, because the last few qualification campaigns we have struggled to start well. We wanted to get off to a fast start, and the way we played was really good in both games, so it’s positive for us. It's a big goal for Norway to reach the tournament, because we haven’t been to a major finals since 2000.
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It’s always good to change the scenery when you can, and now we are back into it here at Arsenal. After being away for a few days you always feel refreshed. You miss your teammates, the staff and everything around the club so it’s great to be back and ready to go again. It’s a nice boost towards the end of the season, and we had an extra couple of days off because we didn’t play at the weekend.
We want to dominate the game again back at home against Fulham tonight. It’s always a difficult game against them and they have had some good performances against us recently. They have a good squad with lots of individual talent, but this season it seems like they are even more of a team as well. They are doing well with their own targets still this season, but we are going to be ready for it and we want another win at home.
There are a lot of familiar faces in their side, and I know it will be special for Emile to be back at the Emirates again. Hopefully we can keep him quiet on the day, but it will be nice to see him and my other teammates again. Sander Berge as well – who I just spent time with during the international break – he’s a really close friend of mine. We’ve played together since the under-15s with Norway, so of course we spoke about this game last week while we were away.
For us we just need to focus on this, and not start looking too far ahead at the other games coming. We are focused just on ‘the moment’ and thinking only about the next game. We still have a lot to play for in the league and we are fighting every game to win. So if other people are talking about the Real Madrid game, that’s fine. But first we’ve got Fulham, then Everton before we can think about anything else.
Finally congratulations to Kai and his wife on the birth of their baby boy – another one for the new parent group at Arsenal! There are quite a few of us now, I guess we are around that same age when things get serious! It’s nice to have a lot of players in the same position, because we are just like a big family here so it’s nice to share lovely news like that when we get it.
Read the rest of Martin's notes, as well as a host of other fantastic content, by buying the Arsenal v Fulham programme either around the stadium oronline.
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