The first month after the Premier League’s winter break was billed as exam season for Arsenal, the unexpected Christmas leaders, momentum checked by half-term, facing a fixture list littered with proverbial Big Tests.
And so it is both alarming and, in hindsight, somewhat amusing to learn how close their captain, Martin Odegaard, came to missing the most important of them with what might, on a schoolboy’s sick-note, have been termed a dicky tummy.
“I started to feel a bit ill in the evening, just after dinner,” Odegaard tells Standard Sport, of the night before last month’s critical north London derby. “Then I started throwing up, I did all night. I was a bit scared because when I first woke up in the morning - well, I didn’t really sleep much - I didn’t feel good.”
Pre-match nerves?
“No, not really!” he laughs. “I’m usually pretty calm before the game. Maybe it was something I ate but I was a bit stressed that I was going to miss it. Then, suddenly, I just got better, managed to eat and the doctor and nutritionist helped a lot. I got there in the end.”
Roused from his sickbed, Odegaard was magnificent that afternoon, orchestrating a statement victory that was followed a week later by another, over Manchester United. But if the Gunners breezed through January almost unscathed, then February has so far proven more of a challenge. Saturday’s draw with Brentford, ultimately the result of a grievous VAR injustice, rankles, but so too does the preceding, deserved defeat at Everton.
“The whole season, any game that we have not had the result we want, or played how we know we can play, the whole squad are upset and that’s a good thing,” Odegaard says. “We are not happy if we don’t win and that’s the mentality that what we want.”
Still, those five dropped points have turned tonight’s meeting with Manchester City into a shoot-out for top spot. At their best, the Arsenal of this season have resembled the vintage City of recent ones and listening to Odegaard describe the intensity with which Mikel Arteta has driven his team to this point, one hears echoes of various Pep Guardiola acolytes.
“You see the energy he puts into it and how much passion he shows, how important it is to him,” Odegaard says. “You always have to be on your toes, you have to be at your best. It’s not just in the games, it’s every day in training. Everyone has to be so sharp and that comes from the environment he has created.”
The relationship between the managers means stylistic parallels are drawn easily enough and Odegaard has himself earned favourable comparisons with Kevin de Bruyne, City’s outstanding creative force.
“He’s someone I’ve watched a lot. We play in the same position and he’s one of the best in the world, if not the best, so it’s good to try and learn a little bit,” the Norwegian says. “But I think we’re quite different as well.”
That the teams meet tonight on such close footing is testament to a remarkable and unforeseen level of progress at the Emirates. When Odegaard made his full debut, two years ago this week, Arsenal were 11th and looked, to use a phrase once coined in exasperation by Paul Merson, “a gillion miles away” from challenging - at least to those of us on the outside.
Cast in direct opposition for the first time in the League this term, the distinction between champions and pretenders remains explicit: City’s squad have 43 Premier League winners’ medals between them, while Arsenal’s have eight, all won at the Etihad and shipped in last summer. And yet, as Odegaard points out, experience does not come only from success, nor solely with age.
“In terms of what we’ve been through - Bukayo [Saka], me and some of the other boys as well - we’ve been through a lot already,” he says. “You have to use it in the best way. A young kid can have more experience than the old guy, you know? It’s not about the age but what you’ve been through and what you’ve learned on the way.”
Odegaard talks up the growing leadership qualities of Saka, who, he hints, has it in him to go through the gears from the shy, smiling public persona.
“He can be loud when he needs to be,” Odegaard grins. “He says what he wants and he’s taking more and more responsibility. People have this [impression] where they see a player and think he’s like this [all the time] but inside the dressing room people are different.”
As far as his own captaincy is concerned, Odegaard has resolved to do things his way. Recalling the major dressing room influences at Real Madrid, he picks out not only Cristiano Ronaldo and Sergio Ramos but also the more quiet, commanding presence of Luka Modric.
“There are many ways to lead,” Odegaard says, and in a lineage of Arsenal skippers he is certainly more Cesc Fabregas than Tony Adams or Patrick Vieira. How he would love to succeed the latter pair, however, by lifting the Premier League trophy.
