Martin Ødegaard now faces an Arsenal challenge everybody saw coming

Heading into this season, Arsenal captain Martin Ødegaard has a point to prove.

The Norwegian midfielder, who has been key to rebuilding Arsenal in this current era, had one of his worst seasons in an Arsenal shirt last season. However, what mattered most to Arsenal fans is that he came in clutch when he was needed most - in crunch time of the last campaign.

Despite being missing in action for a large part of last season, Ødegaard had an excellent end to the season, World Cup and he even came up with a goal of his own in the Community Shield.

Martin Ødegaard has been tasked with a new challenge at Arsenal this season

According to the trusted journalist Isaan Khan, Martin Ødegaard is making insiders at Arsenal excited again. He has been tasked with improving his numbers in terms of goal involvements, and the expectation is that he'll do it.

This could explain why we saw Ødegaard adopt a much more direct approach against Man City in the Community Shield. He found himself in possession of the ball in positions that we don't see him in too often, and this ultimately resulted in the goal that sealed the game.

When he's at his best, Martin Ødegaard is a near-perfect player. However, the only gripe that Arsenal fans would have is that he doesn't have the best attacking numbers.

And that's fine. It can be looked past. After all, Arsenal are aiming to win the Premier League title, not to have the most amount of Fantasy Premier League points.

The table makes for pretty grim reading if you only consume football via data (which is certainly the most boring way to consume sport, but here we are). It would make you think that Martin Ødegaard is getting worse.

But that's not entirely true. If you take context into account, the Arsenal team has got much better over time. This means that Ødegaard has adapted his game so that he is consistently assisting more than he's scoring nowadays. That will continue to be the case, because he is more of a provider than a scorer.

Nevertheless, you can see why Arsenal want to see more attacking numbers from Ødegaard. He does an exceptional job at literally everything else, but to please those data consumers at the end of the season, he will hopefully have kinder numbers to show for his work.

Hey, any Arsenal fan would gladly accept more goals or assists from Ødegaard.

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