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 this afternoon’s Premier League visit from Crystal Palace, he discusses our brilliant defensive form, why our central defensive partnership is so good, and his thoughts on Palace’s progression. Here is a snippet:
All season long, the team has been so good defensively, and we want to continue that, while also improving everywhere we can. I heard afterwards that we have only had one shot on target against us in the past three games, and that’s unbelievable. That’s nine clean sheets and just three goals conceded in 12 games this season.
For me that comes down to a lot of different aspects: organisation, hard work, communication, a bit of everything.
We’ve worked together for a long time now and everyone knows the principles. It also helps that our players at the back are absolute beasts and they just love those situations! But ahead of them we defend from the front as a team, and the midfield players too. It’s one unit working well together, so that makes it a lot easier for us to be compact and defend like we do.
In the centre of our defence, when you watch Big Gabi and Willo, you can tell how much they love defending! They’ve played together for a long time now and they’re really close away from the pitch. They know each other so well and you see that if one of them makes a mistake, then the other one is there to fix it. They work so well together, but to be fair you see that across the team with lots of combinations and partnerships all over the pitch. The principles are really clear, the culture is really clear and that helps a lot.
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We know we will need to be at our best to face Crystal Palace today. They have done so well recently, and for me what they have been achieving is the beauty of football in general and especially in the Premier League. Every year you have a team that can surprise, and last season they won the FA Cup, which they really deserved. They started this season well too but for me they’ve always had a really good team.
They have good, technical players but I feel like just lately they have really turned into a solid team as well. The manager is doing a great job there – he has made them a really tough team to play against because they don’t give much away defensively but they can also attack. They have that physicality now, especially up front with Mateta, so it’s a challenging team to play against. It’s another great test for us.
We want to keep our good run going, and the best way to do that is just focus on ourselves and our performances. As Bukayo said last week, people were ready to say that our season was done if we didn’t beat Newcastle. Now just a few weeks later we are top and all of a sudden everyone is saying we’re going to win it. So there is always a lot of noise around us, either positive or negative, and what we always have to do is concentrate on ourselves.
Everyone knows, especially from our past experiences, that things can be decided by one point, as it was two years ago. It’s a really tight and tough league and we know how important every game is. That’s why every victory you can get is massive.
Read the rest of Martin’s notes, as well as a host of other fantastic content, by buying the Arsenal v Crystal Palace programme either around the stadium or online, or subscribe to get every edition delivered to your door.
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