BODØ (VG) (Bodø / Glimt – Arsenal 0-1) Captain Martin Ødegaard (23) and Arsenal have taken a long step towards progressing in the Europa League – without being a hero Glad the way they did it.
– I’m glad we won, but you can talk a lot about the performance. It wasn’t our best, everyone can see that. We should have been better with and without the ball, so we made it a bit easy for them, says Odegaard in VG’s post-match self-criticism.
– It was a little annoying because we couldn’t get the ball more, and that opens things up for them a little bit today. Before that, he told Viaplay, there was a lot of slack with the ball and it wasn’t a great day for us.
On July 30, Martin Odegaard was appointed as Arsenal’s new captain. Since then, they have won 13 of 14 games in the 2022–23 season Twice against Bodo / Glimt.
He believes that the Northerners should be proud of the performance, which had them abusing several great opportunities in Aspmyra against a surprisingly strong Arsenal side on paper.
– He didn’t verbally ask me to start, but I saw from his pre-match preparations that he wanted to play today, says Arteta of Odegaard in the post-match press conference – and the Norwegian himself jokingly confirms that he took a little extra knee raise when the Spaniard saw his way.
– Level up inside
Arsenal have three out of three potential wins, are in complete control and top the Europa League group made up of themselves, FC Zurich, PSV Eindhoven and Bodeaux/Glimt. The last appeared against Arsenal Both in the second half at the Emirates Stadium stadium And they have enough chances For both points and a win at Aspmyra on Thursday. But captain Martin Odegaard, who is back on artificial turf in Norway, led the team in another strong performance.
– We have a higher internal level than what we show today. We won and they had some chances, but we came away with a victory, and that’s what matters, says Martin Odegaard to Viaplay after the victory on Norwegian soil.
The ability to snatch wins is Arsenal’s great strength in the fall of 2022.
Since the Spaniard, and the club’s former midfield champion, Mikel Arteta took over as the club’s coach, there have been many changes to the player’s front, and the search for talent, such as Odegaard (the first on loan from Real Sociedad from January 2021) has been important on the way towards The powerful crew he’s built now.
Arsenal have now beaten Tottenham in the favorite city and Liverpool at home. They are top of the Premier League after nine rounds, cruising as Manchester City’s toughest rivals led by Erling Braut Haaland (now one point behind the London side) for the Premier League title in England. Only Manchester United beat them this season.
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Although Bodo/Glimt ended up with zero points after two meetings with Arsenal, coach Kjetil Knutsen insists he is proud of the performance and believes that even they were paid meagerly. His streak of 14 home wins in the context of the European Cup has also been broken.
– They deserve all the credit, because not many teams have managed to win 14 games in a row, said Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta in the post-match press conference.
– They should be proud of this achievement here. They make it difficult for us, adds Odegaard, and I’m not too surprised.
After the match, Odegaard and Knutsen exchanged particularly playful words, the latter loosening the veil a little:
– What a development of his situation in his career. It was very nice, he bragged a lot about us too, Knutsen says of the conversation he had with Martin Odegaard after the match.
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