- Odegaard has become subject to a weird culture war, largely predicated on Arsenal not winning the league.
- Any premise where we sell him faces the same issue: if he’s worth £70m speculatively we should want to keep him. Maybe there’s an arbitrage opportunity where a mid tier club takes a punt on his injury record for the quality upgrade at £40-£60m. Some of the culture war people (eg Cochrane, #10s need to be scoring bangers, or more sophisticated Palmer, football is evolving to 442, we need partnerships not triangles, physicality vs ball keeping) might take that. I look at what he brings in terms of ball retention and progression and wouldn’t.
- There’s an odd discourse of us being a big boy club now and therefore having to sell well/ kill our darlings. That makes more sense wrt academy talent rather than eg top 5 epl chance creators. Seems more memetic (Citeh sold Sterling!) than reasoned. Don’t have to go far to find in Liverpool a club that did exactly that last season who fell completely flat. And they had eg the Transfer Flow lining up to congratulate their audacity.
- it would be interesting to see Nico Paz as a comparison.
My biases: I really dislike the anti Odegaard discourse. It’s either simple minded pfm shite (Cochrane), or just weird confirmation bias (Palmer, coming at MO after every dropped point last season).
yeah, for sure I think that he's become a bit of the main character of a battle that is about him but not REALLY about him.
I tried to be fair here and acknowledge that what detractors are seeing in him not being at the same level as he was previously is true, just one goal last season in the PL+CL in 21 nineties is also well below what you'd expect for a player that plays around the box as much as he did. That's a fair thing to point out and want more from him on that. Also, needs to be able to do more doesn't mean doesn't provide lots of value to the team. It is a nuanced position.
I suppose you can judge him on output, he only has 9 g&as last season in 1770 minutes. Eze has 12 in 2672 CL & EPL. He’s 6 months older and I don’t see people doing the same bullet biting on his £65m fee and significant wages. Maybe goals are more valuable than assists.
I think selling Odegaard would be a huge mistake unless we get a big offer (minimum of £80m in my mind).
To get a player with his sort of ability is going to cost at least £100m with the current market as it is.
He has had a couple of seasons marred by injury, but they have been almost entirely contact injuries and thus more just "freak occurrences", than they are recurrent soft tissue injuries.
If he goes back to his previous level of fitness and availability, he is still more than capable of being one of the best attacking/advanced midfielders in the league/world.
If he does end up becoming injured more and we do want to sell him next summer for less money, it would be a marginal annoyance, but given the very low fee we paid for him in the first place, years ago, I think we have certainly had our money's worth from him and would just have to make peace with not making big money from his sale.
Some points:
- Odegaard has become subject to a weird culture war, largely predicated on Arsenal not winning the league.
- Any premise where we sell him faces the same issue: if he’s worth £70m speculatively we should want to keep him. Maybe there’s an arbitrage opportunity where a mid tier club takes a punt on his injury record for the quality upgrade at £40-£60m. Some of the culture war people (eg Cochrane, #10s need to be scoring bangers, or more sophisticated Palmer, football is evolving to 442, we need partnerships not triangles, physicality vs ball keeping) might take that. I look at what he brings in terms of ball retention and progression and wouldn’t.
- There’s an odd discourse of us being a big boy club now and therefore having to sell well/ kill our darlings. That makes more sense wrt academy talent rather than eg top 5 epl chance creators. Seems more memetic (Citeh sold Sterling!) than reasoned. Don’t have to go far to find in Liverpool a club that did exactly that last season who fell completely flat. And they had eg the Transfer Flow lining up to congratulate their audacity.
- it would be interesting to see Nico Paz as a comparison.
My biases: I really dislike the anti Odegaard discourse. It’s either simple minded pfm shite (Cochrane), or just weird confirmation bias (Palmer, coming at MO after every dropped point last season).
yeah, for sure I think that he's become a bit of the main character of a battle that is about him but not REALLY about him.
I tried to be fair here and acknowledge that what detractors are seeing in him not being at the same level as he was previously is true, just one goal last season in the PL+CL in 21 nineties is also well below what you'd expect for a player that plays around the box as much as he did. That's a fair thing to point out and want more from him on that. Also, needs to be able to do more doesn't mean doesn't provide lots of value to the team. It is a nuanced position.
I suppose you can judge him on output, he only has 9 g&as last season in 1770 minutes. Eze has 12 in 2672 CL & EPL. He’s 6 months older and I don’t see people doing the same bullet biting on his £65m fee and significant wages. Maybe goals are more valuable than assists.
Yes people have generally had more grace with regards to Eze this season
I think selling Odegaard would be a huge mistake unless we get a big offer (minimum of £80m in my mind).
To get a player with his sort of ability is going to cost at least £100m with the current market as it is.
He has had a couple of seasons marred by injury, but they have been almost entirely contact injuries and thus more just "freak occurrences", than they are recurrent soft tissue injuries.
If he goes back to his previous level of fitness and availability, he is still more than capable of being one of the best attacking/advanced midfielders in the league/world.
If he does end up becoming injured more and we do want to sell him next summer for less money, it would be a marginal annoyance, but given the very low fee we paid for him in the first place, years ago, I think we have certainly had our money's worth from him and would just have to make peace with not making big money from his sale.