Real Madrid, thank you very much. How a club could look at the obvious talent of Martin Odegaard and think not only are they willing to let it go, but also for a figure in the region of £34million, seems madness in retrospect.
Odegaard scored his 15th Premier League goal of the season with the opener at Newcastle, a strike in what was on paper one of Arsenal’s hardest of the season and certainly one few backed the Gunners to win, especially with a clean sheet. The goal meant Odegaard has overtaken Yaya Toure in terms of his best non-penalty goalscoring season in the league, having already jumped Frank Lampard whilst facing the former Chelsea midfielder’s Blues side on Tuesday with a brace.
Odegaard had his doubters when he arrived, and they persisted throughout his first 18 months. The biggest criticism being he needed to contribute more, score more and be a better clinical finisher when in and around the box.
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Back then I felt compelled to defend the Norwegian, seeing him as a player with similar goal expectations to Man City’s Bernardo Silva whose tally in 2021/22 was just one higher than Odegaard’s for the same season with eight. I was wrong, and despite my staunch defence I even managed to underestimate not only what was to come, but how much he would progress as a player in the space of a single summer.
Odegaard is world-class. He is in that bracket for me.
His ability on the ball, his goalscoring form, his creativity and now also his leadership having taken the armband in the summer have elevated his profile something that I, someone who was and is even more so now a huge fan of the player, still managed to underestimate.
Questions were being asked in Spain as early as December 2021 as to why they’d allowed Odegaard to leave. However with the extensions to Toni Kroos and Luka Modric in the offing and Jude Bellingham potentially on the way they’re not short of quality options.
However, I cannot help but wonder what a quintet of Bellingham, Federico Valverde, Eduardo Camavinga, Aurélien Tchouaméni and Odegaard would have been. That is a team’s midfield for the next half-decade plus sorted comfortably.
Yet, let’s not linger on what could have been at Los Blancos, and instead revel in what Arsenal have managed to secure. Segueing back to the fee… £34million.
That has to be the best amount spent by Arsenal on a player in the better part of a decade, maybe more. The ~£16million spent on Santi Cazorla will always be a point of competition but the Spaniard was in his prime when he arrived and Odegaard will reach his in north London.
William Saliba at £27million of course has an argument too and Gabriel Martinelli at sub-£10million will always be one of the most astute. But in this environment of spending, a roughly £30m fee for Odegaard is simply ridiculous.
It stands as somewhat an example to the club and a lesson to fans that world-class talent can be secured without going into the triple figures of millions that we could see Arsenal move to this summer. Quality is available if you can find it.
The last point is that when Arsenal went for Odegaard, there wasn’t particularly a queue of clubs lining up to battle them besides Real Sociedad. This argument of fewer suitors somehow equals a fair wariness of a player can be firmly canned now.
Odegaard is great, and Arsenal are just as brilliant for getting him. Forward to the future and certainly a new deal needs to be the next focus.
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