How Arsenal's Martin Ødegaard OUTPLAYED West Ham

Arsenal continued their fine form by thrashing London rivals West Ham 6-0 at the London Stadium. Now while it was an utterly domination by Arsenal and they completely deserved to win, the whole team played brilliant but there was a few players that stood out completely. And one of them was the captain Martin Odegaard who continued his brilliant form with a scintillating performance to give the Gunners the win. But how was Odegaard so effective and how did Arsenal overcome West Ham's challenge? It's safe to say Arsenal are back after four wins in a row. They have been brilliant recently and they followed up their amazing win against Liverpool with an utterly devastating victory against West Ham. Now Arsenal have struggled against West Ham in the past and twice this season they've already lost to them, especially dominating them at the Emirates in the Premier League and coming away with a 2-0 loss. Arsenal beat Liverpool with a double pivot with Jorginho in midfield and they used Havertz up front to come deeper to overload the midfield. In this game, Arsenal knew this wasn't going to work and Arteta tried to change the plan to put Havertz back in midfield. However, it was not that simple. Because Jesus was injured, Trossard played in centre forwards and was actually a false nine coming a lot into midfield and Havertz moving up to win the duels and beat the defenders. Now because Kivijor is not comfortable as Zinchenko in the inverted role and Kivijor had to play because Zinchenko was injured, Odegaard is often dropping deep which sees Arsenal build up in a 4-2-4 shape. This overloads the West Ham press and although it lacks numbers high, Arsenal could progress the ball up quicker and get players up there. White was the person we gave the job to in Burton and he had to be very smart in this game to be in a good position when Odegaard had the ball. Arsenal usually like building up in a 3-2-5, so Ben White had to be that right winger to build up but had to be careful that Odegaard did not lose possession or was in a good position to cover. Because this takes some time to set up, Arsenal were not necessarily always quick at being progressive against the West Ham defence. But often when they got in a deeper position up against the West Ham defence, they pinned them back because they had five players and more than West Ham. West Ham are a team that usually sit back and are quite physical, so people like Zinchenko being out wasn't the worst for Arsenal because they could play Havertz and Kivijot in the team. Odegaard kept picking the ball up in space around the pitch and he often had very ready moments where he dribbled past players and had a free space to run into. Odegaard was brilliant in this game at interchanging with Ben White to invert at different times. Sometimes Ben White would come in to overload that midfield but sometimes Odegaard would also keep the ball. We kept changing it over and over in that first half and West Ham just simply couldn't live with it. A lot of the time, Odegaard was picking the ball up deep from the right side of the pitch and he'd even go past Suscek with a dribble or usually pass it off to White or Saka that comes deeper and then move on to pass it, go through Suscek. West Ham weren't dealing with him and weren't going past him and then Odegaard, Trotter, Havertz, Martinelli, Saka, White all up against the defence at this point even though West Ham were playing deeper and deeper. And we know how good Odegaard can be creatively. And sometimes in the game, Ward, Proust and Kudis would just get caught up front and they would not be able to come back. And this often let Suscek and Alvarez have to do a lot with the overload that Arsenal had. And if they made a poor touch, we had so many players there with Trossard, Havertz, Martinelli, Odegaard and Rice all being in that midfield. And just like the fourth goal where we pick it up from a poor touch by Alvarez, Paris does a simple pass into Odegaard who's then in an elevated position and he's got Trossard running in the box. He just picks him out and Trossard puts it in the top corner. And now to say Martin Odegaard is just a creative player or anything would be a complete lie. Martin Odegaard is an all-phase midfielder. He is a natural progressor, passer, everything in that midfield. He can do anything to the level he can. He could easily play as an eight and still do a brilliant job. He's one of the most hard-working midfielders Arsenal have had in a very long time. And even if a pass goes past him, he will make sure he goes back and does the tackle to win the ball back. And despite not being physical in stature, he uses a lot of physicality to win the ball back and win jewels for his team. Odegaard often picked the ball up from deep and he'd usually work around players. He wouldn't necessarily go past them if he felt like he couldn't and he'd pass it off and get a one-two on to go past them. As soon as he's in space as well, because West Ham didn't press him outside the box 25-30 yards out and we had so many runners in there, he had so many options and he always picked them out. There was many times that Havertz and Saka would interchange in the box and lay it off for each other. Or even Kivio or Martinelli or White would go from the wing and go up front. Odegaard found it really easy to find these passes in the space. And for some reason, West Ham weren't getting close enough to him. So he had time to do what he wanted. I think Odegaard really benefited from this tactical display because also Arteta made it so Trossard would come from the edge of the box as well. Because at some points we were so dominant and had to pull so much, we had nearly all our attackers in there. And Trossard could actually sit just outside the box as well with Odegaard giving him options. This is what happened with a Trossard goal. And this is what happened when we created many chances. We may not use Trossard as an option, but he's definitely pulling away defenders towards him and not all towards Odegaard. And Odegaard, even though Reiss played mostly as a single pivot in this game, obviously we were very dominant. We were falling up at half time. So at that point, it's kind of just attacking. West Ham had given up. He did come back and collect the ball a lot from Reiss and also our defenders. He kind of played a bit of a double pivot, but more moved up. And he was much better on that right side, being able to progress with the ball in space and pass it up the field. While on the other side, we have Martinelli, Havertz and Trossard and sometimes even Kivijor creating an overload on the left side. We also had him, White and Saka having a nice little triangle down the right. And when Arsenal scored their fifth goal with Saka, Odegaard got his second assist of the day. It's just a simple little outside the foot run. They don't get close enough to him and he passes it through for Saka, who does the rest. This is where you want him. Other players pulling people away, giving Odegaard the space and ability to run forward and give chances to our team. Now, when I say this was a monster performance by Odegaard, I really mean it. Not only was he the most involved player in the game, making a whopping 121 touches. He also made 12 passes into the final third and created a whopping 7 chances for the team. Not only that, he made 107 passes out of 113, being very accurate. And when you consider the amount of chances he created, that is an insane pass completion and complete over 100 passes a game is ridiculous. In fact, this is so mental. He's the first player on record since 2004 to complete 100 passes, making it an iconic display for the captain. And to make his stats even better this season, he has now created over 50 chances in Europe, being the most creative player in European football. And in the last 11 games, he has created 46 chances and 11 big chances. That is a big chance a game. That is insane stats. He is really playing at the top of his game right now. And he has the most expected assists in the league. So the fact he doesn't have a lot is not his fault when you think about it. I also think his real captain leadership came through today. A lot of the players on the bench wanted Ethan Nwari to come on, a player that is very much like Odegaard, who's only 16 years old. And when he came on, Odegaard was running to make sure we kept the ball and kept a clean sheet, while also giving the ball to the kid as much as he could. He passed it to Ethan Nwari as much as he could and got him on the ball to create chances. So we could actually see a little bit of him in the first team. Now if that's not what captain mentality or leader mentality is, I don't know what is. He's a phenomenal football player and phenomenal leader for this team. Anyone that thinks we should get rid of him is quite frankly stupid at the moment. Odegaard is the real creative force of the team and when he plays as an eight or a bit deeper, he is very much better. This is why I think Arsenal will preferably get a six in the summer. They really showed what he could do today against a decent team, West Ham, who've always got the better of us. And the system will change that Arteta did in this game And to prove he can do any parts of the game, he also made five recoveries in this game. Very encouraging. Martin Odegaard was everywhere on the pitch and as an all-phase midfielder, he can really do every phase on the pitch. His goalscoring might have fell off from last season, but his positioning and arguably his creative work and midfield work has got even better and you'll see it eventually. It's getting better every single week. What a brilliant result for Arsenal. Thank you guys for watching. Let me know what you think about the result or Martin Odegaard as the captain in this team. And if you like this video, I'll recommend going to watch my video yesterday, where I talked about Grimaldo, tactical masterclass against Bayern Munich. Please go and watch that. Thank you for watching.