Martin Odegaard revives Arsenal and their title challenge: How the Gunners’ creative force is ‘different’

LONDON — A pretty simple sport this. Your team has hit a creative rut that coincided with the absence of your primary playmaker? Get him back and all your problems evaporate. So yes, the semi-frequent leaden-footed attacking, sterile possession and clumsy decision-making that reared its unfamiliar head at Arsenal over the last two months was nothing more than a team unable to cope without Martin Odegaard.

As he eased through his second game in two months, slicing up one of the Premier League’s top defenses, you could see why Odegaard’s absence had been so profoundly felt. Mikel Arteta and Edu, the now former sporting director, have been understandably criticized for summer business that left Arsenal without a senior backup to their club captain. But really, would any of Fabio Vieira, Emile Smith Rowe and even Ethan Nwaneri — promising though his cameo was once more — have been able to deliver a fraction of the creativity and control of Odegaard?

“When he’s on the team, you can sense something that is different,” said Mikel Arteta. “It’s difficult to put a finger on it but it’s different.”

His ability to manipulate opponents is second to none in the Premier League. Woe betide anyone who gets too close to the Norwegian, you run quite the risk of the ball slipping through your legs as Odegaard drives into open field. There is no angle he can’t manufacture, no pass he can’t spot. Bukayo Saka finds his skipper on the right corner of the box and immediately two Nottingham Forest bodies converge on Odegaard.

At first, you think the first touch has let him down, trapping the ball right under his legs so that he will have to take another touch before playing a pass. At least you or I would have to. Not Odegaard, who instead slides the ball through a rapidly closing gap and directly into the path of Saka. A touch, another and another. One more for luck and a rifling strike fires Arsenal into a 15th-minute lead. The dynamic duo: crash, bang and walloping like Adam West and Burt Ward.

“That’s chemistry, sometimes you meet somebody, straight away you make eye contact and something flows,” said Arteta. “That’s the case with those two.

“When you put them together in the right spaces, things flourish and things happen naturally. With others, you try to force it and it doesn’t work. With these two we are very lucky to have them.”

Odegaard soothed the nerves of a crowd acutely aware of where their side’s title challenge would be if more points were dropped. More than that, he was not opposed to giving the Emirates a good rollicking as and when required. Ninety minutes of driving rain could quell the intensity of any crowd. However, when a six-man move culminated in a shot curled wide by Gabriel Jesus, who might not seem so luckless in front of goal if he were more willing to test his fortune by shooting more than once a game, Odegaard demanded noise. The Clock End responded.

Everyone was dancing to Odegaard’s tune. Scarcely a passage of play was not enhanced by a flick, a jink or a quick pass to pull Forest out of position. The six chances he had created by the final whistle were the most he has delivered since the final day of last season, his 13 progressive passes the most of anyone in red this afternoon. Not bad for a player who says he is still working his way back to 100 percent. 

Those statistics don’t even capture all of Odegaard’s excellence. He won’t get an assist for his contribution to the second goal but he probably deserves a share of Saka’s. After all, Thomas Partey would not have had the space to bend a shot in from 25 yards if it hadn’t been for the run of Odegaard drawing Ryan Yates from the edge of the area deep into the penalty box. That afforded Partey all the time he needed to take a touch and strike home. “You cannot allow such space,” said Nuno Espirito Santo, far from impressed by his side’s defensive work throughout the 90 minutes. 

With 40 minutes to go, Arsenal could breathe. You’d have to go back six months for the last time a win has felt so straightforward around these parts. Indeed, it was comfortable enough that Arteta was able to go deeper than his depth chart than the unused Kai Havertz, Gabriel Martinelli or Declan Rice, the latter still nursing a toe injury. Instead, in came Oleksandr Zinchenko and Raheem Sterling, the latter sparking at last with an assist for Nwaneri.

The 17-year-old, now Arsenal’s second youngest Premier League scorer, rose to the standards set by Odegaard and delivered an elegantly struck finish past Matz Sels’ near post. It was enough to have you wondering if he merited more starting opportunities in those dull days where north London was awaiting the return of their talisman.

That was then, but from now on, it is all about the one man who can fire this team back to what they were before his injury. Odegaard is back. So are Arsenal.