Martin Odegaard, the captain of Arsenal, has acknowledged that the team’s recent losses to Leeds, Southampton, and PSV Eindhoven left them dissatisfied with their play.
In a game in which Patrick Bamford missed a second-half penalty, Mikel Arteta’s team lost to Leeds in the Premier League by a razor-thin margin in October. They were then destroyed by PSV in the Europa League, even though only two of their five goals were valid, and then they drew 1-1 with Southampton.
Since then, Arsenal has recovered by defeating Nottingham Forest 5-0 and finishing first in their Europa League group after defeating Zurich on Thursday.
Gabriel Martinelli scored the opening goal for the Gunners against Forest, which was different from their previous performances against Leeds and Southampton in that they were able to build off that goal. The squad’s previous failures, according to Odegaard, have been a talking point.
The Norwegian said in the club’s authorized matchday program that they had been discussing that as a group over the previous few weeks.
In a few of those games, they played well in the first half, but the game changed in the second, and we’ve been struggling more than we’d like. Even after beating Leeds, drawing at Southampton, and losing at PSV, everyone was feeling a little frustrated.
Even so, Odegaard insists that it says a lot about Arsenal that they were still winning games and then was able to recover that they were able to do so.
We’ve had a few games where we weren’t at our best, but we’re still in first place in the Premier League and Europe, he said, which is a sign of how this team is progressing.
He believes we demonstrated our unhappiness with our actions on the field against Nottingham Forest, even though we weren’t entirely satisfied with what we had been doing. We were aware of the fact that we could do more and were eager to.
