Martin Odegaard's Impact on Arsenal's Season

Martin Odegaard did not just lift a trophy in Cardiff. He changed the temperature around Arsenal’s season before a league ball has even been kicked.

In a 3-0 dismantling of Manchester City in the Community Shield, the Norwegian played like a man intent on reclaiming a stage that injuries had dragged away from him last year. This was not the Odegaard who limped through 2025-26, stuck on the fringes of his own title-winning team. This was the conductor back in the pit, baton raised, dictating everything.

Odegaard back at the centre of it all

Last season should have been the crowning of Arsenal’s captain. Instead, knee and shoulder problems left him watching too often. He started only 16 Premier League games. One goal, seven assists – his leanest return since he made his move from Real Madrid permanent in 2021-22.

Arsenal still ended their 22-year wait for a league title without him at full tilt. That was the scary part. What happens if he actually returns to his peak?

Cardiff offered a glimpse.

Odegaard’s numbers against City told one story. His performance told another. No Arsenal player completed more passes (55 of 58), more dribbles (three out of three) or won possession more often (nine times). He pressed, he probed, he knitted everything together. And then, with City already rocked, he delivered the moment that will stick.

A feint, a dummy, and Gianluigi Donnarumma on the turf, beaten by a movement of the hips before the ball was rolled home for Arsenal’s third. It was the flourish of a player who feels his rhythm returning.

Competition everywhere, clarity for one man

Mikel Arteta has not stood still since that long-awaited title. He has thrown more quality into the most crowded room at the club: midfield.

Bruno Guimaraes arrived for £75m and looked every inch the part in his 45 minutes on the pitch. Mikel Merino, one of the many vying for minutes, has already described Arsenal’s midfield options as “probably the best in football”. It is a bold claim, yet when you list them – Odegaard, Guimaraes, Myles Lewis-Skelly, Martin Zubimendi, Declan Rice, Eberechi Eze, Merino – it does not sound outlandish.

That level of competition can suffocate a player. It can also sharpen one. Odegaard’s quality has never really been up for debate, but last season his inconsistency and absences opened up conversations that had been unthinkable a year earlier. Should he still wear the armband? Was he influential enough in the biggest moments?

On Sunday, he started to shut those questions down.

He looked like a captain again, not just in the way he used the ball, but in the way he demanded it. The extra bodies around him did not crowd him out; they gave him better angles, quicker combinations, new patterns. His link with Guimaraes, on their first start together, already carried the hint of something dangerous for the rest of the division.

Sometimes, as Odegaard put it afterwards, you are “just in the flow”. Arsenal’s midfield flowed through him.

From frustration to fuel

Odegaard did not hide how bruising last season had been for him personally.

“Last year was really a big struggle with a lot of difficult moments. To miss so many games because of injury was really frustrating,” he said. “It is the worst thing for a footballer to not be able to be on the pitch and I had quite a lot of weird injuries, and bad luck.”

The turning point came late. He finished the campaign fit, helped Arsenal over the line domestically, then carried that momentum into the World Cup with Norway. Five starts out of six, four assists, and the sense that his sharpness was finally returning.

“It was good for me to end the season with a title, here, and then a good World Cup. Then I had my break and I feel good, ready to go again,” he said. “What I have just worked on is to use that as motivation for this year and to come back stronger. And to use all of those experiences in a positive way.”

Those are not the words of a player dwelling on what went wrong. They are the words of someone who has turned a painful year into kindling.

Arteta’s ‘different Martin’

Arteta has always seen Odegaard as a pillar of his rebuild. The Norwegian was central when Arsenal first began to tilt back towards the top of English football. The frustration for the manager last season was simple: he barely had his playmaker available long enough to build any momentum around him.

“Well, he missed five or six months for different things and it was extremely difficult for him to get any momentum,” Arteta said. “So I'm sure this year if we can maintain him fit, available with the players around him, we're going to see a very different Martin.”

The key phrase came next. Arteta spoke about sensing, from the first day of pre-season, that Odegaard had “something else on the belly” – a hunger to prove and to show more, at the exact moment the team needs it.

That edge was visible in Cardiff. He played with a bite, an urgency, that suggested this is not just a return to his old level, but a push towards a new one.

A ‘new signing’ hiding in plain sight?

Arsenal’s summer business has been loud. Big fees, big names, big statements. Yet the most transformative figure for their title defence might already be in the building, wearing the armband.

If Odegaard stays fit, if this Community Shield is a preview rather than a one-off, Arteta could find himself with the most valuable thing in elite football: a world-class creator who feels like he has something to prove.

For a team that just broke a 22-year wait to win the Premier League, what does it look like when their captain plays a full season at his peak?