He was nowhere near one of the top performers in La Liga last season...That's an understatement.
If by well you mean best performing player in the league bar Messi, then yes.
Not even close to the top twenty best players.
Martin Ødegaard | Arse Loan
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Not even close to the top twenty best players.
K
I said it about ceballos and I'll say it again
Small time from arsenal, accepting their place as a feeder club to one of the big boys
Shouldn't be loaning players without an option to buy
I think it's a good move for all parties. Real won't lose the player and can keep him happy with first team football in a top league, the player gets to experience English football and weigh up his future, Arsenal fill a gap in their squad left my Ozil.
Not sure how he'll adapt as it's only a short term deal but I think he'll do okay. Obviously it's written he'll come on against United and do the business over the weekend..
Not sure how he'll adapt as it's only a short term deal but I think he'll do okay. Obviously it's written he'll come on against United and do the business over the weekend..
Probably closest in recent times was Tevez, two year loan or something?
Did get a CL and two league titles with him around so paid off.
You should probably get on the phone to the Arsenal board and tell them how to run the club, seeing as you seem to be such an expert.
Ozil was never in their squad though and they have a number of young players already playing in that position so I find it a strange signing.
ESR is really the only young player we have in the CAM position, unless you want to count Joe Willock (who isn't very good). Smith-Rowe has had a lot of injury and fitness trouble in his career and is only 20. He can't play every match, especially since we're going to be playing twice a week regularly if we keep progressing in the Europa League.
Saka has also played a ton of minutes for a 19-year-old this season and is going to need some rest. I expect to see ESR, Saka, and Odegaard rotate in the 10 and RW positions. If we play twice a week there are 360 minutes in those positions available and if each of them gets around 120 minutes a week or a bit less (with Willian picking up some garbage time), that would be perfect.
The rest of the season is going to be an absolute slog with players jaded and injuries mounting. Depth is going to be important for every squad.
Odegaard and Arsenal is a win-win situation. It’s unusual to have such a deal; only six months, but I don’t understand the problem if both parts benefit from a short term deal. Arsenal identified a problem they prioritised to solve quickly rather than waiting for a permanent solution. The transfer situation is likely difficult today and Martin was available. It’s a no brainer. The feeder argument is irrelevant in my opinion.
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Not that Red_Aaron the actual solution (who knows! He might be!), but I think the Arsenal board could maybe use some advice on how to run your club? Have met a few Arsenal fans who aren’t happy with your Board/owner.
Anyway, am curious to see how he does in the EPL considering the hype he gets on the Caf. Good short term solution for Arsenal and seemingly for both the player and Madrid.
Nice
Odegaard will be a good signing in the short term. We will need to revisit the position again in the summer, but looking forward to seeing how he gets on.
Yep, I don't see this deal as a bad thing. We're broke, we needed a creative player and there's a global pandemic. I don't know if Odegaard is the solution but we needed a loan signing like this and to suggest we shouldn't have gone for it because of pride is utter nonsense.
Oh I definitely agree with that, we're mainly in this position because they've wasted so much money in recent years. But to then avoid signing loan players because of pride would only compound the problem, not solve it.
Especially since the alternatives are essentially Willian and Willock, both of whom have been simply awful this year. Odegaard doesn't have to be great to be a big improvement over those two.
With Pepe looking somewhat useful yesterday on the left and Odegaard coming in, we now have seven players for the four attacking positions (Auba, Laca, ESR, Saka, Odegaard, Martinelli, Pepe) that are not named Willian, Willock, or Nketiah. Those three wasters have gotten nearly 1500 league minutes between them and the less we see of them on the pitch going forward the better.
Yep! Agreed with your last sentence especially!
there is of course a pinch of winding a rival up in my post but there is a am serious point here, one which I'd genuinely hate to see my club get involved in (I was delighted we walked away from the reguillon deal in the summer as the buy back nonsense is a similar situation) What's the best case scenario for arsenal here?
I'd suggest the best they can hope for is that he's 'ok' maybe a little above average because anything else is a long term loss for them.
If he's brilliant they can't keep him and they lose a key player at the end of the season. Not only are future results affected but player mentality too as they see a teammate using arsenal as a stepping stone and how do they suddenly view the club then ?
If he's total crap it's a waste of resources they could've put toward a player of their own that maybe could've benefited them long term or at very least shown other youngsters at the club that they'll be given chances
Your fellow fan talked above about how do we expect little arsenal to compete with the big boys, well that's kind of my point. Arsenal are accepting a lesser position here, they could coach the shit out of this guy and make him a world beater, there's no benefit to them though (except maybe Real will lend them the next player they want to give minutes to without risking their own results)
I couldn't see someone like wenger taking deals like this, there's someone who despite his flaws had arsenal's best interests at heart. All this move serves is possibly protecting artetas positon and the boards coffers.
I get modern football is changing and during the covid period finances are doubly worrisome. Arteta is grabbing at whatever he can because he needs any kind of short term upturn to protect his job. The player will get minutes and regardless of the outcome can always swan back to Spain in the summer. So they've both nothing to lose.
Would you be pleased if he's excellent for you for the rest of the season only for Chelsea or Spurs to drop a fat wad in reals lap and sign him in the summer now that you've got him nice and settled in the league?
It's short term thinking
And small time mentality
Again, we don't have a choice.
What's the best case scenario for arsenal here?
I'd suggest the best they can hope for is that he's 'ok' maybe a little above average because anything else is a long term loss for them.
If he's brilliant they can't keep him and they lose a key player at the end of the season. Not only are future results affected but player mentality too as they see a teammate using arsenal as a stepping stone and how do they suddenly view the club then ?
If he's total crap it's a waste of resources they could've put toward a player of their own that maybe could've benefited them long term or at very least shown other youngsters at the club that they'll be given chances
Your fellow fan talked above about how do we expect little arsenal to compete with the big boys, well that's kind of my point. Arsenal are accepting a lesser position here, they could coach the shit out of this guy and make him a world beater, there's no benefit to them though (except maybe Real will lend them the next player they want to give minutes to without risking their own results)
I couldn't see someone like wenger taking deals like this, there's someone who despite his flaws had arsenal's best interests at heart. All this move serves is possibly protecting artetas positon and the boards coffers.
I get modern football is changing and during the covid period finances are doubly worrisome. Arteta is grabbing at whatever he can because he needs any kind of short term upturn to protect his job. The player will get minutes and regardless of the outcome can always swan back to Spain in the summer. So they've both nothing to lose.
Would you be pleased if he's excellent for you for the rest of the season only for Chelsea or Spurs to drop a fat wad in reals lap and sign him in the summer now that you've got him nice and settled in the league?
It's short term thinking
And small time mentality
Define excellent. If he somehow manages to solve our creativity issues on his own, win us the EL and/or push us to 4th/5th then yes please go ahead and offer Real Madrid 80M, we probably won't be anywhere near that table. We'd have got what we needed for 2.5M€. Short-term masterclass by the club.
If he's unable to adapt, can't get his knee problem behind him and play 30min in 6 months then tough luck. Very low financial hit, ESR will have all the gametime in the world and oppo fans will have endless fun watching Willian pretend to be a footballer.
It's as short-term as spending 40M on Buendia while being a far bigger risk. If he happened to not work out, you find yourself with Willian on 200k for 3 years, Pepe that we paid 70M for and Buendia on which we would definitely take a hit if we wanted to move him on. All of this on 1 RW/CM slot. It is simply impossible to build and fix a squad that way with Arsenal's budget. Big mistakes have been made and will have a big influence on what we can/will do the next 2 to 3 years. And keep in mind that every future mistake will delay a return to challenging for trophies.
If Havertz ends up being a bust and Chelsea signed Odegaard for whatever amount, there would be a few memes, a few tweets but in the end they won't really care. Roman will line it up. Unlikely Kroenke would do that. Call it small time, Arsenalesque, boring or whatever but that's the financial reality.
He'll come on and tear us a new arse Sunday.
In desember 2019 he was ranked 3 best player in Laliga on whoscored. He had the most key passes of all players in Laliga up til then. That is when the jumpers knee started troubling him. He was also LaLiga player of the month in september. Before the injury he was one of the very best in Laliga. after christmas he started declining with the pains from the jumpers knee, and eventually had to drop games and be taken off early later in the season.
Also, acc. to instat in february he was the best attacking midfielder in Spain up until february at least.
https://en.as.com/en/2020/02/06/football/1580992990_755417.html
So yeah, one of the top performers.
So no, one of the top performers for a month, then a massive decline where he could even get into the starting 11.
Be that down to injury or just out of form, he wasn't a regular starter for a large chunk of the season, so calling him a top performer in the league is absolutely incorrect.
See, this is where you need a shift in mentality. When you loan a player, you don't loan him for the benefit of the parent club, or primarily to improve the player (although those can be by products). You loan the player to benefit your team, & your club. It doesn't matter if that's an experienced player like Ighalo, Larsson or Falcao, or a younger player like Odegaard, you loan the player because you think it will benefit you. Just because Odegaard is younger & before his prime compared to he names I mentioned who were past their prime doesn't make it any less so.
What's the best case scenario for arsenal here?
I'd suggest the best they can hope for is that he's 'ok' maybe a little above average because anything else is a long term loss for them.
If he's brilliant they can't keep him and they lose a key player at the end of the season. Not only are future results affected but player mentality too as they see a teammate using arsenal as a stepping stone and how do they suddenly view the club then ?
If he's total crap it's a waste of resources they could've put toward a player of their own that maybe could've benefited them long term or at very least shown other youngsters at the club that they'll be given chances
Your fellow fan talked above about how do we expect little arsenal to compete with the big boys, well that's kind of my point. Arsenal are accepting a lesser position here, they could coach the shit out of this guy and make him a world beater, there's no benefit to them though (except maybe Real will lend them the next player they want to give minutes to without risking their own results)
I couldn't see someone like wenger taking deals like this, there's someone who despite his flaws had arsenal's best interests at heart. All this move serves is possibly protecting artetas positon and the boards coffers.
I get modern football is changing and during the covid period finances are doubly worrisome. Arteta is grabbing at whatever he can because he needs any kind of short term upturn to protect his job. The player will get minutes and regardless of the outcome can always swan back to Spain in the summer. So they've both nothing to lose.
Would you be pleased if he's excellent for you for the rest of the season only for Chelsea or Spurs to drop a fat wad in reals lap and sign him in the summer now that you've got him nice and settled in the league?
It's short term thinking
And small time mentality
Now, there's lots of different reasons to loan players, to cover short term injuries, gap in the squad, lack of money for a more permanent signing, & Odegaard just about ticks all those boxes for us.
Let me say if Willian & Pepe were doing their job properly, then we wouldn't need a loan player. They've been poor, very poor, but that happens in football. What we've also seen is when we play them our attack is 10 times worse. The 2 games vs Southampton back to back are a perfect snapshot.
But we know we have some very good young players. However, we also know, that ESR has a history of injury problems, he's even nursing an injury just now, & Saka has played a lot of games for a 19 year old, so they can't be relied on to play 2 games a week for the next 12 weeks, they just can't. So, considering we've had a very poor first half of the season, we currently find ourselves 3 points off 6th & 5 points off 4th (with different games played, granted). Do you think we should just turn down the chance of a good player, when we have very little money, & the chance to potentially minimise the risk of dropping back into the poor form of the autumn / early winter, because we don't have a clause?
For me whether it includes a loan option or not is kind of irrelevant, without knowing the clubs plans going forward. What we do know is the player & clubs are going to sit down at the end of the season & evaluate things then.
But, for debating sakes, I'll ask a few questions. How many of your loans were made permanent for example? How many players have you seen go on loan to English Premier league teams, rip it up & a bigger club has came in & gazumped the loan team because they didn't have an option to buy? How many loan options are not taken up?
And that's not even going into the fact we're in the middle of a pandemic, it's January, the market is dead, we stand lose £145m in revenue since it started, we've just taken out a £120M loan etc.
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I can't find any figures for his salary at RM, but I'd think he would've earned around 3 million euros during his time there. While that is a lot of money, I don't think earning a few millions by the age of 22 was his highest priority when he moved there. He just bit off too much than he could chew by moving to RM. It was too big of a step up in a hostile environment.
As others have pointed out, he'd rather be at the level of Haaland right now, than being richer than Haaland.
80 to 85k pw at Madrid and apparently 95/100k for 6 months at Arsenal according to Norwegian journalists. Can't remember ever a loanee negociating a pay rise. Only 15/20k for a short duration but still. It was an issue when he joined Madrid and was earning as much as a first team player while playing in the youth squad.
I read that Arsenal will potentially pay up to €3.8m including all potential bonuses from here through the season. The increased weekly salary is probably a sign that (even though not scoring in 9 games in RM) he is due a payrise on his normal contract. And several clubs tried to get him to choose them in this window.
But yeah, he got a very high salary to start with as a kid, if 80k is right that means he's made around €25m in those 6 years there (and likely to be higher if you include bonuses and sponsor deals).
He/his family also got a significant sign-on fee when he went to RM as a kid. Done sorta behind the scenes. They hired his father as an assistant youth-coach (and I'm not even sure if he could speak Spanish to talk to the youth). The father got a sign-on deal worth €3m as well as yearly salary of €100k (while other coaches at the same level made €12k). It was to both sweeten the deal and make sure Ødegaard had some family with him when he moved at such a young age. Reports said the other coaches didn't know what to do with him. (He's now back coaching youth in Drammen, Norway where the family is from.)
It's not like he would have been on Haaland's level if he just went to Ajax instead, they are very different as players. His role doesn't score as much and thus isn't as much talked about. Plus he has struggled with injuries, but even if his career stops in the next years he has more than enough money to live a comfortable life.
He was doing really well in Real Sociedad last season, so well that Zidane called him to bring him back 1 year earlier than planned, which is why he now demanded to go on loan as he wasn't getting played enough. I'm quite interested to see how he'll do in the Prem (just don't play him this weekend).
While these under the table shenanigans are quite common for in-demand players, this seems quite a lot. To think of the outrage when Spurs (rumoured?) to have signed young Bale after offering his parents a house!
I meant he'd rather be as sought after as Haaland now.
Dembele is a year older than Odergaard, and got his big move after a year at Dortmund. We can argue about his 150 mil price tag, but you'd at least think Dembele was worth half that given his age, skillset and the season he had in 2015-16. I don't think Odergaard has ever reached the kind of level which Dembele reached back then. He has most definitely made more than enough money to not have anyone in his family to work another day, but he is off the pace if he wants to be in the running for a legend of this game, which I thought he would be given his skill level when he was 16.
Obviously, him being a success at Ajax or him not going on to be a legend isn't certain either. He has age on his side yet, and can walk into that Arse side. So curious how this turns out. I'd have preferred a buy-back clause sell, which would've motivated Arse to play him, even if the results took a dive downwards.
Hmm.. How many of the best ranked 15/16y players are actually able to make all the steps?
Except from his injuries, I think we should be quite happy with his development. Maybe a disadvantage with breaking trough very young is that everything seems to be very planed for the future; carefully progress step by step. Also taking into account that Odegaard is extremely disciplined and structured, make me believe we will see much more from him in the future; I expect him to take several steps next years.
It’s easy to see his potential when he is in a safe environment and play with freedom and confidence. In RM he looked tied up and a little bit unsure of things. He played very very safe and was afraid of making mistakes, all the opposite of his play in RS.
Everyone knows RM isn’t the friendliest environment for young players to develop. They have a bad reputation which today also is reinforced by the pressure on a desperate Zidane. He struggles to keep his head above water and his strategy is to rely even more on the old players. At some point this strategy will hit back in him and RM, especially since the club is close to bankruptcy; not able to conduct galacticos transfers.
Except from his injuries, I think we should be quite happy with his development. Maybe a disadvantage with breaking trough very young is that everything seems to be very planed for the future; carefully progress step by step. Also taking into account that Odegaard is extremely disciplined and structured, make me believe we will see much more from him in the future; I expect him to take several steps next years.
It’s easy to see his potential when he is in a safe environment and play with freedom and confidence. In RM he looked tied up and a little bit unsure of things. He played very very safe and was afraid of making mistakes, all the opposite of his play in RS.
Everyone knows RM isn’t the friendliest environment for young players to develop. They have a bad reputation which today also is reinforced by the pressure on a desperate Zidane. He struggles to keep his head above water and his strategy is to rely even more on the old players. At some point this strategy will hit back in him and RM, especially since the club is close to bankruptcy; not able to conduct galacticos transfers.
He's the new captain of Norway's national team. That's pretty impressive for a soft-spoken 22 year old.
He's very professional, hard-working and mature for his age and the other players seem to respect him, so it makes sense.
He's very professional, hard-working and mature for his age and the other players seem to respect him, so it makes sense.
I'll be annoyed if Arsenal pick him up permanently.
Why? If he fulfils his potential he will leave Arsenal. It is probably the appropriate level for him right now. No pressure environment to play nice football.
It would be nice if we could renew the loan because i don't think we'll be able to buy him this summer. No idea how much would Madrid value him at. 40/45M maybe ?
We're probably not going to buy Ceballos and need a lot of bodies in midfield on a small budget.
We're probably not going to buy Ceballos and need a lot of bodies in midfield on a small budget.
If Madrid are willing to let go but insist on a sale rather than another loan, I wonder if a loan with obligation might be worth looking at. Not sure how it works in accounting terms but knowing they have the cash defo coming in at some point might help smooth a deal.
He was very good vs West Ham. Pulled strings whole game.
Top player. Would love him as a Mata replacement.
He actually reminded me a bit of Mata. Was superb today, ran the show that last one hour.
He's fecking class.
If given trust and responsibility in a fitting team, Martin can mastermind and control games like few others. Great game today. I wonder how many km he ran today. Must have been a lot. I look forward to seeing him take more chances with dribbles and shots but his confidence is growing and he still has more to him. Just hope the national team does not use him 3x90 now, he needs to stay injury free and not re-ignite that jumpers knee condition.
Amazing performance today.
Best player on the pitch today!
He reminds me of a young KdB.
He reminds me of a young KdB.
This is easily his level. Give him runs behind the defence and he will get an assist or two a game. If pogba is leaving, a swap would be great