Three goals in four games
Martin Odegaard scored against Chelsea on Sunday. One touch, then a slick outside-of-the-boot finish over Emiliano Martinez, and Arsenal had the lead they never looked like giving up. The Norwegian now has three goals in four appearances across all competitions.
Last season he managed one. In 36 outings.
None of this happened by accident. Mikel Arteta asked his captain to push higher up the pitch, and Opta’s tracking shows exactly what that looks like: 3.2 high-intensity runs per 90 minutes into the opposition box in the Premier League this season, against 1.4 last term. The volume has more than doubled.
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The playmaker who stopped scoring, and started again
Arsenal signed a pure No 10 back in 2021. What they have now is different. Odegaard spent the intervening seasons drifting deeper, collecting the ball off the back line, knitting moves together from 40 yards out rather than finishing them.
Arteta wants both versions at once. Seven runs to get on the end of a cross in three league matches, when the entire 2025-26 campaign produced ten. Per 90 minutes: 0.65 becomes 2.8.
Kai Havertz starting up front explains part of it. The German operates as a false nine and wants bodies running past him. Viktor Gyokeres attacks that space himself. Arteta picked one, and Odegaard is the one filling the gaps left behind.
Forty percent of the minutes, and a knee that keeps interrupting
Odegaard played 1,371 of a possible 3,420 Premier League minutes last season. Just over 40 percent. Recurring knee trouble kept pulling him out for weeks at a time. Look at his first three full seasons in London and the numbers read 32, 37, 35 league starts out of 38. The last two: 26, then 16.
Norway’s run to the World Cup quarter-finals seemed to reset something. Four assists there, a tally beaten only by Michael Olise on seven. Eberechi Eze is pushing hard from behind after covering the role for much of last season, and Arteta still leans on his captain for the defensive graft and the shape of the press. Since the season started, only two Premier League players have posted at least 1.0 expected goals and 1.0 expected assists. Odegaard is one of them.
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