Evaluating some common critiques of Martin Ødegaard

A deep dive into Arsenal's Captain and some myth busting on some things that are commonly brought up about how he plays

When things go wrong or even aren’t wrong but are in a bit of a rough patch, there is a tendency in fans to look at players and make one a scapegoat for the bigger-picture problems.

That player now is Arsenal’s captain Martin Ødegaard.

He has a few characteristics that set him up for a lot this criticism. He is the captain, he is the highest-paid player on the team, he is the reigning player of the year. We have seen him go from a young player with lots of potential to a player that is considered one of the best midfielders in the world.

Ødegaard, like Arsenal, is suffering a bit from the "happiness is the difference between expectations and reality" syndrome. The expectations for the player and the team were sky-high this season, and the reality is that he has been close to his best and his previous levels (but a bit below). But expectations for him weren’t just to be as good as he was previously, but keep pushing beyond what came previous and raising the level.

When you look at a high level there really isn’t that much of a change between Ødegaard this season and Ødegaard last season. There are some slight changes in the production but nothing here that would jump out explaining why people have this level of frustration with him.

Looking at a bigger grouping of stats and it is still pretty clear he is performing at least on the aggregate level this season it is a similar high level to last season.

Looking at a bit longer time horizon of this season compared to his previous three the same description holds; his statistical production is very similar and there is not a noticeable drop off like you would expect from how he has been described this season.

When I look at him play this season, I can see that he is a bit off his best his physicality. He looks just a bit off and there is a lack of the elite sharpness, but I am certainly more inclined to think that this is a bit downstream of the injuries to the players in front of him. To go through this analysis, I wanted to get feedback from readers and what they are seeing and how that shows in the data.

The Deep Dive

One-Footedness:

Summary of the criticism here:

• A recurring criticism is Ødegaard’s extreme reliance on his left foot, which limits his passing and shooting options. This leads to delays in decision-making as he adjusts the ball to his preferred foot, slowing transitions and making him predictable. Many note missed opportunities for quick passes or shots due to his reluctance to use his right foot.

This was a common thing that came up when I asked about it. It is also not a new thing for Ødegaard, he has long been a pretty one footed player. The interesting thing is that the amount of two-footed players is actually pretty small here.

I wish there was still public data available on passing by foot, and if you have it feel free to shoot me an email and I will be glad to update this section.

For now, the next best proxy for footedness that we can use is a player shooting and how often they use each foot. It’s not perfect, but it probably should line up fairly well for most players and how often they trust their weaker foot.

Ødegaard uses his right foot 12% of the time and his left foot 88% of the time this season, which has actually been a bit less one-footed than he has been in the past, where he was closer to 90/10 favoring his left foot.

He is a bit more one-footed than other left-footed players (who are on average more one-footed than right-footers), but it doesn’t seem like he is an extreme outlier here ranking in the 37th percentile for left-footed players and 29th percentile for all players for how one-footed he is (a higher percentile here would be closer to 50/50 here).

As for how this limits his ability to pass/shoot, slows down his ability or limits his effectiveness, it is probably impossible to determine that with stats. At an overall level, he still is extremely productive with the limitation, but perhaps this is limiting him from being even more productive. It is frustrating to see the situations where you want to scream, “just use your other foot” and it kind of boggles my mind knowing the technical level these players have, even in their off-foot that they still tend to stick to only using the strong foot.

His shooting (again the area that we have the most granular information on foot) shows that maybe there is a good reason that he doesn’t use the right foot that often.

He’s been a plus finisher with his left foot over the last three seasons and a below-average finisher (in a small sample) with his right foot. It is a tough counterfactual, and maybe we are missing shots that could have been goals or good chances but never happened because he lacked the confidence or technical level with his weak foot to execute them.

Ineffectiveness in Transitions:

• Ødegaard is seen by some as a weak ball carrier, particularly over long distances or in counter-attacking situations. His lack of athleticism and dynamism hampers Arsenal’s ability to exploit transitional moments, with some suggesting he kills momentum by taking unnecessary touches or waiting for teammates rather than driving forward himself.

This complaint is one that I think has crept up more and more this season, and I think there is a bit of looking for someone to blame for what might be a bit of a tactical choice from Arsenal.

Ødegaard’s issues here aren’t blameless, but how it fits inside of what Arsenal is doing might be the bigger-picture issue.

Arsenal have leaned heavily into control and slower deliberate play. They aren’t one of the more extreme teams this season but they are a team where you see more passes per sequence and a slower speed in a forward direction.

This puts Arsenal in a category where they are very hard to counter against, but it is seemingly coming at the expense of what they can do on the counter as well. This season Arsenal have been a below average team at generating these quick attacking situations.

The critique here is one where there is potential truth and seeing something real. I think we have all seen the clips or opportunities in a game where there are chances to go quickly up the field, but he turns back and doesn’t take advantage of that moment.

One thing that we won’t and really can’t know is how many of these decisions are his choice, and how much of this is the instruction of Mikel Arteta. If there is a critique of Arteta that I find myself agreeing with is that Arsenal don’t often enough accept that trade-off to take on more risk to push their talent advantage.

Ødegaard ranks 10th among advanced midfielders in shots assisted off of direct attacks and fast breaks.

This isn’t a perfect encapsulation of the critique given that we are not only looking at the final action on these, but overall ability to contribute to these plays. I would love to spend more time trying to dig into this at a future date but right now I just don’t have that broken out.

Perhaps an xG buildup-type metric here for these types of plays would help capture this more fully.

With that acknowledgement out of the way, we can look at the quality of the shots from the direct attacks created and here he drops further down to 16th and in a spot where he is creating much less value than others.

I think this a valid two-pronged critique, Arsenal can do more tactically to allow and create these high-value attacking opportunities and even within what Arsenal do now, Ødegaard is only above average here and his skills aren’t likely maxed out at that level.

I am going to come back to more ball carrying in a bit, for now let’s get into the next category.

Final Third Output:

• Critics highlight his inconsistency in the final third, including poor shot quality (often wayward or underpowered), ineffective crossing, and a tendency to overhit or underhit passes (especially through balls). His goal threat has declined since the 2022/23 season, with fewer shots per game and less presence in the box.

If I was going to make this an even shorter section I would say that this is a “he’s given the creative role and he’s not doing enough creating” summary.

High-Level Creativity

When you look at the longer-term picture (22/23 to current season) this doesn’t really hold much water. He is a player that is roughly two standard deviations better than his peers and has metrics that are pretty consistently 95th percentile or better for creating chances for his teammates.

This season the numbers aren’t quite as elite as you would want and the idea holds weight. The extent to which it has been a drop off from previous seasons, however, doesn’t really seem all that convincing.

This season he is averaging just “very good” numbers, down from elite numbers.

Among advanced midfielders, he ranks 3rd in open play chances created (but a decent distance from the top 2 without much gap to those behind him).

He ranks 13th in open play xA created.

One of the hard things to disentangle here is that creativity is not as fully in control as other items that a player does. When you make a pass, you don’t always control what happens after that, and it very well could be a situation that this season the injuries to attackers have led to fewer of his passes turning into shots.

He leads the league in passes completed into the box per 90 both among all players or breaking it down to just midfielders as shown below.

It is the same for through balls, another very high-value pass that is often associated with high-quality chances created.

One of his favorite passes is the ball between the center back and fullback to the winger or fullback making the diagonal run behind, and while he is still playing that ball a lot this season (given that he is often been without Bukayo Saka and Ben White) it hasn’t had nearly the same impact as it has previously.

Crossing

Looking at the crossing I think there is absolutely truth that he has an angle bias that is affected by his one-footedness here. He lives on the right-hand side of the formation and that means that even if he plays wide or overlaps, the defenders know that he will almost never try a right-footed cross and is always going to look to cut into onto his left foot and play that floated back post ball.

He is not a high-volume crosser, and this season he has not completed them at nearly the rate that you would expect and that is almost certainly down to his predictability here.

This does present a good opportunity to do a comparison to two players that he is often compared to: Kevin De Bruyne and Mesut Özil.

De Bruyne by comparison looks like a cross spammer. He really loved this type of pass and was good at it, but at over 8 per 90 in his Premier League career has been in a different level of volume to Ødegaard. KdB’s 2019/20 season (304) by itself has nearly as many cross attempts as Ødegaard has in his Premier League career (332).

De Bruyne is most dependent on crosses of these three to generate shooting chances, with 28.3% of his key passes in the Premier League coming from crosses. For Ozil it was 25% and for Ødegaard it has been 15%.

This isn’t necessarily a good or bad thing, but it does highlight that the players have gone about creating chances in pretty different ways.

Among some of the best creators the Premier League has seen it does look like Ødegaard has a clear weakness whipping in crosses in comparison but it is a positive that he seems to hold his own in many other measures.

Shooting

Ødegaard’s shooting this season — if you ignore the goal production part — has been pretty good. However, it’s impossible to overlook that the most valuable part of shooting is scoring goals.

Overall, this season he has good but not elite shot volume balanced out with very good average quality and shooting locations.

Taking this and converting it to a rating, it is about average for the season, with his lack of successful finishes really dragging down his overall rating.

The longer view comes out with him looking like an overall positive finisher, with this season more of an outlier.

From 2022/23 to the current season, he has been a plus finisher compared to xG. This is a more robust sample size and one that would at least push me to say that his current downturn is probably just a weird thing happening in a 50-shot sample, rather than anything larger.

It also looks like a situation where he is accurately described by post shot xG and for the longer term he hasn’t shown that he can add value with his shot placement, but is probably closer to average than anything else here.

Even broken down by different buckets, there still doesn’t seem to be any obvious area that jumps out as a weakness for him, with some overperformance mixed with one bucket in the 20-40% range where he is just under but essentially matching expectations.

Tactical Fit and Role:

• There’s debate about his best position. As a number 10, he lacks the goal-scoring instinct or "magic" of elite creators like Kevin De Bruyne or Florian Wirtz. As a number 8, he lacks physicality for duels or carrying. Some suggest he’d thrive deeper (e.g., left 8), but this could compromise his pressing, a strength of his game. His role as Arsenal’s most advanced midfielder is questioned, with calls for a more dynamic or unpredictable profile.

This is another one where I think some of the critiques are for what they would like to see vs what we are actually seeing happening. Ødegaard at Arsenal is a more advanced midfield player, but he is not really a “10”.

It is interesting in that he is often the more advanced player out of possession, probably because of some the limitations pointed out here with his physicality compared to other midfielders, but in possession he is the advanced midfielder that doesn’t have the license to crash the box with the same freedom as his left-sided counterpart.

The position information isn’t perfect but it is illustrative. At Arsenal, he has played 100% of his minutes from the central midfield role in the 4-3-3.

He has moved further ever so slightly back given more responsibilities in buildup and ball progression over the last 18 months. His share of touches in the middle third has gone up while his share of touches in the final third has dropped.

There is still overlap here where some matches will look more like the more classic 10 role with more final third and minimal duties outside of that but it is far from the norm for him.

This is where I think it would be important to look at some of the carrying numbers. This is a recurring criticism and one that will be important to talk about. The overall on-ball numbers seem to be pretty wildly out of line with the narrative about his play. You’ll see often comments that he can’t drive with the ball and that he lacks the high-level ability to progress the ball at his feet and it just doesn’t square with the actual numbers.

This season he rates out as well above average carrying the ball, adding significant value and doing so on an above average volume of carries.

This has been a trend for is time with Arsenal as well where he has been consistently above average and on an upwards trend.

I come away from this leaning toward the conclusion that this is more about him not being elite at it, and that there are a few players that can do it better than him. I think this a common thing you’ll see in internet conversations and it hurts the discourse overall, but hopefully some of this can help with some of the subtle differences here.

In the FBref rankings, he is 4th in the Premier League for Progressive distance and 17th for total progressive carries in the rather loose positional “midfield” definition here that they have.

This is a good and well above average production, but short of the elite numbers that you will see from the pinnacle of the game players who use carrying as their game-breaking skill. It is not the main trait of Ødegaard for sure and I can imagine that is a very complimentary skill that could pair with him.

Predictability and Risk Aversion:

• Ødegaard’s playstyle is described as too conservative or aesthetically driven, favoring control over bravery. He avoids "obvious" passes for flashier options, struggles against mid or high blocks, and is easy to defend due to his angle bias and limited passing range compared to top creators.

This is another one that is probably impossible to really prove or disprove with stats. You probably wouldn’t be able to prove with hundreds of video clips, either.

I don’t personally find this as particularly persuasive or matching what I see. I think in a way these are contradictory statements. He is too flashy but also too conservative?

Physical and Dynamic Limitations:

• He lacks explosiveness, aerial threat, and the ability to beat players in duels or dribble past opponents. This reduces his impact in big games and against athletic midfielders, where he can be "schemed out."

I think it is an interesting question to look at how he plays in the biggest matches compared to when he has played against weaker opponents. Here is his performances broken out by if the opposition Club Elo was above 1800 (this has roughly been the cutoff for a team that was among the top 20 in Europe) and the matches where they weren’t.

It is certainly true that his effectiveness drops against top teams, but that is the general pattern with players and nothing unusual.

It does look like he’s put up above average numbers against strong opposition but whether this is too much drop-off in the “big” games is probably in the eye of the beholder, with no real definition that we can lean on for what is right or wrong.

Comparison to Elite Players:

• Ødegaard is often unfavorably compared to players like De Bruyne, Wirtz, or Bruno Fernandes. Critics argue he lacks the versatility, ruthlessness, or game-changing ability needed to elevate Arsenal to trophy-winning or European giant status.

I think this will be a fun section where we get to see how Odegaard stacks up against players that many people want him to be more like (aka be more of a 10) or replaced with.

Kevin De Bruyne

I used the 2021/22 to 2023/24 seasons for De Bruyne here so it didn’t have this season where he has really been hit by the age cliff. His numbers hold up pretty well here with a bit off his prime but still very good KDB.

Florian Wirtz

Wirtz has more attacking responsibility and freedom and it shows here. He looks like a great player and it makes sense why he has been a key part of why Leverkusen won a Bundesliga and have backed it up with another strong showing.

Bruno Fernandes

Fernandes is a player with a weird reputation and it is probably because the Manchester United team he has played with has been some of the worst in several generations. He has been a standout player and probably one of the only good things in their teams but even him being an excellent player has not been enough. Here he looks very good compared to Ødegaard.

James Maddison

Maddison has never been a player I have rated especially highly even though he has pretty consistently put up good numbers. There is just something about him as a player (there are other 10 types that fit into this mold too and perhaps that is a similar feeling people that don’t rate Ødegaard fall into as well) that I think he is a player that needs to have a team built around him and he has limits to just how far he can carry a team as the main fulcrum that things run through.

Mesut Özil

I haven’t gone back beyond 2017-18 to do some of the updates to stats, so this is really the oldest that I can pull these specific graphics for and it doesn’t capture Ozil at his peak here. Still interesting to see the comparison.

Dominik Szoboszlai

If the argument is that you can’t win the Premier League without a player better than Ødegaard or that Arsenal must upgrade here to win a title, Szoboszlai is a counterargument to that. He is a good player but I don’t think anyone would mistake him for an elite creative midfielder for Liverpool.

Jamal Musiala

Before Musiala put pen to paper on his new contract this was a long-shot dream for many to add to Arsenal. It makes sense why, as he is a unicorn type player, and he looks like he will be a force that drives Bayern for potentially the next 7-10 years.

Final Thoughts

My big takeaway from doing this is that I think the way that we talk about players online is broken, especially players on teams that we support.

We get so used to seeing them play that we get caught up in the flaws and that becomes almost all that we can see. We see players in other situations where we aren’t living and dying with each match or are just catching the best bits of what they do and see what they can do but gloss over weaknesses. This leads to a major case of “the grass is always greener” with players.

I don’t think this is only an Arsenal thing, either, and it isn’t helped that transfers and winning the transfer windows have become almost as important as the actual matches.

This is where I think Ødegaard is right now, and it is where many Arsenal players have been before. He won’t be the last. He is a major player in the team with big expectations and he’s not smashing them, and neither is the team.

This leads to a mindset where the way to fix this is to replace him or drop him or move him from his position. I think that this leads to a situation where we take what he is giving as just something that happens and we only see what he isn’t giving.

And what he is giving is quite a lot and impressive.

At Arsenal he’s 4th for total passes.

From that he provides a ton of ball progression for the team

This has really picked up as his buildup importance has ticked up. Arsenal were heavily dependent on Oleksandr Zinchenko, Granit Xhaka and Jorginho doing this, but none of the three are regularly featuring in this team. Ødegaard has stepped up in that to take on more of that (while also being a key creative force).

He has become one the key forces that the buildup to the final action flows through, where he is adding tons of value to connect the defensive third to the final third and areas around and into the box.

He has a unique and difficult role within the team that is taxing, and maybe it asks him to do too much right now to be successful. This probably doesn’t skeptics that they are wrong, because people have some valid points about him and his weaknesses.

I think often the next step stuff is where I would diverge from them suggesting that it is better to add players to compliment and remove some burden rather than look for some unicorn that can do what he does and just doesn’t have weaknesses at all.

He may not be the best midfielder in the world, but he sure is a damn good one and I hope that at a minimum this helped hammer this home.

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