Arsenal need the best version of Martin Ødegaard back

Hello, and welcome to the Friday grab bag.

If you missed them, we had a couple great guest pieces earlier in the week. Sebastian Bush wrote about the rise of Brighton midfielder Yasin Ayari, and Mohamed Mohamed talked about how a position change has rejuvenated Dejan Kulusevski.

Over on the betting newsletter, Ted has come to the conclusion that Leicester City, Nottingham Forest, and Tottenham Hotspur are all undervalued by the markets in their matches against bigger and richer opponents. If you want to see why, you can upgrade to premium here.

If Arsenal are going to prove him wrong and put a few past Forest, they’ll probably need a big performance from the returning Martin Ødegaard. —KM

Turns out Martin Ødegaard is really important

When Ødegaard went down with an injury, I quipped on a social media app that Arsenal had lost their most important player. I got yelled at for underrating Bukayo Saka… I don’t think I do, he’s one of the best players in the league. But it became apparent over the last 2 months how much the Gunners struggle to be the title-contending version of themselves without their top central playmaker.

In case you forgot, Ødegaard provided his team with some really exceptional passing and dribbling value last season.

With Ødegaard out of the lineup, Arsenal have created way fewer quality chances. They don’t look that different stylistically, just… worse.

Ødegaard returned to the lineup against Chelsea and set up his team’s only goal. It’ll be tough to overcome a 9-point gap to Liverpool at the top of the table, but Arsenal will be back to feeling like they can contend with their star playmaker back in the lineup.

This weekend, they face a much different challenge than Chelsea, and one they really need an Ødegaard-like star to break down. Nottingham Forest are sitting on the same number of points as Arsenal, just one behind them in goal differential.

Forest are achieving results with a defense that plays deep and light on pressing relative to their peers. They don’t really care if opponents have the ball for long stretches, as long as they’re not entering dangerous areas.

You can expect to see Forest playing in a deep and compact defense with 10 men behind the ball for most of this game, and doing it well. If Arsenal are going to unlock them, there’s a good chance it’ll be down to Ødegaard’s quality.

Games we’re watching

As usual, you can find times and tv/streaming for your region at LiveSoccerTV.

Bayern Munich vs. Augsburg — No big marquee Bundesliga match this week, so enjoy a likely Harry Kane highlight reel.

AC Milan vs. Juventus — The best title race in Europe gets even spicier if Milan can pull of a minor upset win and turn it into a 7-way battle.

Manchester City vs. Tottenham Hotspur — These teams have both been stumbling all over the place recently and really can’t afford to fall further behind their rivals for 1st/4th, respectively.

Lens vs. Marseille — I have not paid attention to Lens this year but they’re sneakily good and could prove difficult for Marseille to score on.

Athletic Bilbao vs. Real Sociedad — The two big Basque clubs have both slightly underperformed expectations this season, but they’re both very much still in the race for 4th in La Liga.

Orlando Pride vs. Washington Spirit — The NWSL final features the top two teams from the regular season table. Barbra Banda vs. Trinity Rodman. As good as it gets in women’s football.

Stuff we’re reading

Paul MacInnes at The Guardian covered Premier League clubs choosing to alter their Associated Party Transactions rules, with Manchester City and their allies losing out.

Nick Harris at Sporting Intelligence has more details on the rules and why certain clubs voted the way they did.

Kyle Boas at Tactics Journal wrote about why he doesn’t care for defensive-focused football, and another piece I saw this week felt very related…

Mark Thompson at Get Goalside argued that one of the biggest things football clubs have learned from advances in analytics is that it’s smart to take more attacking risks. Boas and Thompson came to a very similar conclusion despite coming at this idea from totally different perspectives.

Aidan Smith at Tactically Speaking thinks that inverted fullbacks and box midfields are starting to go out of style as opponents learn how to counter them. You may have noticed that the most common counter-strategy is just Four Four Flippin’ Two. The circle of life!

Bergas Brillianto at Analytics FC looks at how Bayern Munich uses man marking in its pressing structure and how most of the Bundesliga has copied them. The results have been mixed for teams that don’t have Bayern-level talent.

Grace Robertson at Grace On Football asks if a move to Real Madrid makes sense for Trent Alexander-Arnold.

Ali Maxwell at Not The Top 20 asks if Championship strikers collectively have the yips, and concludes they probably just play too many dang games.

Luis Kircher at Total Football Analysis has a preview of this weekend’s big game in Serie A, Milan vs. Juventus.

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