The Ødegaard Decision

Sell now, extend now, or ride the risk for a year?

Things change fast in the Premier League. 18 months ago if someone floated the idea of Arsenal selling Martin Ødegaard that would have been seen as unserious hyperbole or link chasing behavior.

He was the captain, the creative heartbeat of the team, and was in the conversation for the best midfielder in the world.

Here we are now and it doesn’t seem so far fetched that it could happen. The reporting out there is from generally solid sources and it seems like something that should be taken seriously. The BBC's Sami Mokbel has spoken about Arsenal being willing to listen to offers "for the right price," football.london puts him among a group of first team players facing uncertain futures, and there have been links to Bayern Munich with quieter inquiries out of Italy.

This isn’t a fire yet, but there might be the start of a bit of smoke building here and the fact that this is a discussion at all tells you how much things have changed.

This is a big deal and it deserves a good hard examination, so let’s get into it.

The injury cloud hanging over everything

It’s hard to go too much further without talking more about the injuries and the effects that they have had on him.

Ødegaard has been a robust player over his career and had maintained a relatively clean injury history. From the time he joined Arsenal on loan through the end of the 2023-2024 season he had missed just 6 total matches due to injury.

Since then he has been hit with a number of injuries and that has seen him miss 45 matches in just the last two seasons.

Even more than the time that he has missed, watching him play you can see that it seemed to take quite a bit out of him. From the outside this looks especially true with the ankle injury that seemed to take a good portion of the 2024-25 season to fully heal and for him to regain the trust and strength that he had previously.

I am cautiously optimistic that the type and reasons for the injuries are more freak occurrence than worrying for long term need to be managed types. He has suffered injuries that are much more contact/collision based than the soft tissue types.

The player he still is

One of the hard parts of being online and discussing soccer is that opinions are so often flattened and there is a loss of nuance. These are the times where I am thankful to be able to talk or write at length to fully express these opinions.

Ødegaard is a great example of this.

He has declined and or seen his production affected by injury over the last two seasons in comparison to what he was able to do in the 2022-2024 period.

His decline has not made him a bad player or one that is useless. In fact it is quite the opposite and he is still quite good and very talented!

You can and should acknowledge that the production has fallen off, especially in front of goal where he has just 6 non-penalty goals in the Premier League plus Champions League over the last two seasons (just 1 last year). Acknowledging this truth doesn’t automatically mean that he has become useless or unusable player either.

Here is his radar and distribution chart for the Premier League and the Champions League for the last two seasons.

He isn’t pushing himself into one of the top midfielders in the world discussions off of this but he still shows up as well rounded and productive midfielder, especially when you look at it on a template that highlights his strengths as an advanced midfielder.

The 2022 through 2024 seasons were clearly his peak and he had put himself in the conversation for the best midfielders in the game. He showed the ability to be a threat around the box playing much more as a “10” in 22/23 and then adapting to a deeper more “8” ball progression focused role in 23/24.

I want to stress this again, even though he has fallen off of his peak, he is still producing excellent overall numbers.

The contract clock and what a fee should look like

There is a classic cliche that at the two years remaining on a contract, that is the time that you have to make the big decision on a player to sell or extend their contract. I think that for the vast majority of player cases that is true but it isn’t perfect for all 100 percent.

I think that this Ødegaard situation is a real tough one. If you are Arsenal you probably aren’t in a rush to want to extend him, like we have just talked about his production is down. There might be a good explanation for why, with a reasonable expectation that he can bounce back. To what extent he can bounce back and how high the probability of that bounce back are major unknowns right now.

That is not the situation that you want going into a contract negotiation, especially for a player that I think would have every expectation and basis to be highly paid. I don’t know or have any sort of inside information here and maybe the player is willing to acknowledge the uncertainty there as well and would drop the demands or make things a more incentive based, but I always have my doubts on these things and never begrudge players trying to maximize their earnings.

These same issues will pop up for any team that would be interested in buying him from Arsenal as well. The market of teams that could realistically afford the combination of fee and wages is already limited and then adding the uncertainty around the injuries/decline and that might limit things further.

For Arsenal, I think that they would not feel desperate to sell at just any price and would expect to get a sizeable fee that would be in line with selling a top player who is still in his prime. Transfermarkt values Ødegaard at €65m, the rumors out there suggest that Arsenal would be starting the bidding at £80m. When I posed this to my followers on social media the general view was that the floor here among fans is probably in the £50-60m range. I’d generally agree with that, with my own floor here at about £60m, it would be really hard to accept losing him without getting back money that would cover most of what would need to be spent to replace him.

I would really dislike selling him within the Premier League, that is where the fee would be the highest but it is just so distasteful to imagine him playing for another team and seeing him at least twice a season.

I think that Ødegaard could be a good fit for Serie A but there has been fairly limited appetite or ability to pay big fees in Italy these days. Juventus have come the closest recently pushing €58m for Teun Koopmeiners in 2024 but outside of that you have the weird Douglas Luiz swap deal and that’s about it for deals over €40m. Inter have been rumored but this would be potentially their record signing and be far the biggest they have spent post Covid (current biggest fee paid since 2020 is €43m for Achraf Hakimi).

In La Liga, Barcelona and Real Madrid could afford him but Barcelona are well stocked at midfield and he’s already been through Madrid and left. Atleti have been known to spend and they might have a bunch of money coming in if the sell Julian Alvarez, so maybe that could be a dark horse option.

In Germany you have Bayern, and this has been one of the most realistic current links. Bayern can afford the fee and wages, plus they have had quite a bit of success bringing over players from the Premier League recently. Dortmund will spend money but they are usually more of a bargain hunter when it comes to players that are in their prime.

Last you have PSG in France, I think that he could do quite well there but they are again a team that is well stocked at midfield and I don’t see them in the market right now without major injuries or departures.

The replacement problem

Now we are into the meat of where I see the problem.

As much as a certain segment of the fan base seems ready and to a certain degree already has, moving away from Ødegaard isn’t easy.

I looked into this back in November of last season and the analysis remains true.

Arsenal have adapted in the absence of Ødegaard, but they still miss him

I am going to copy over the main conclusion from that post here because it nails the nuance here.

1. Martin Ødegaard is a very good player, one of the best ball progressors in the world, with a unique ability to help the team get into the final third AND get the ball into the box. When you lose a player like this, it is going to have a major impact on a team’s ability to control games and generate the high attacking numbers that we have come to expect. Arsenal experienced that when he was unavailable last season, and they are feeling that again with him out this year.

2. Arsenal have done a good job adding additional depth and making adjustments with the tactics to help mitigate the loss of the season, and that was not something that the team was able to do to the same extent in the past. Arsenal have not played in the same way without Ødegaard, but they have managed to produce results and underlying performance numbers this season that have been similar to what they have done with him. That is a big improvement from what we have seen previously.

Arsenal have remained a strong team in the absence of Ødegaard but one of the major complaints about the team is that they have not been at their best generating attacking numbers, especially from open play. My view is that this is one of the primary areas where a healthy Ødegaard makes the biggest impact on the team, through his ability to connect defense to attack and to move the ball into the most dangerous shooting areas.

Eberechi Eze was one of the main players that Arsenal turned to last season to try and take up the role and while he popped up with some pivotal moments and was a key player to deliver Arsenal the title, it is hard to say that he fully replaced what Ødegaard brought in midfield with his passing, ball progression and creativity.

I wouldn’t expect Martín Zubimendi to be able to replicate the hybrid 8/10 role that Ødegaard has. He plays a deeper role and while he can pop up closer to goal, I view that as a secondary type skill rather than something that should be his primary goal.

Zubimendi had a good first campaign with Arsenal, even with some fading down the stretch. I expect he will continue to play a big role in midfield but I think he will be a player deeper and even there he is unlikely to ever turn into a classic deep lying playmaker that puts up monster ball progression numbers.

Arsenal have been linked with some players outside of the club as well, but at least in the short term I’d have concerns that they would be able to fill the hole as well.

When I was doing the Stat Scouting of Morgan Rogers I expressed my doubts about his suitability as an “8” and my view hasn’t really changed in the last week. The comparison to Ødegaard shows that even though they nominally play in similar parts of the field, they do so in different ways and with vastly different strengths and weaknesses.

This isn’t to say that you couldn’t slide Rogers into the “Right 8” or “10” position and still play well, I think that you would really need something else in the other midfield spot(s) or fullback to pickup the missing ball progression.

One of the other names that is on people’s lips is Bournemouth’s Alex Scott. He’s a very intriguing young player that has taken a big step forward this last season for Bournemouth. He found himself in the top 10 of the most recent rankings for the box to box role as well.

He’s a player that I think could blossom into the type of player that Arsenal would want here but if we are talking about the next 1-3 seasons, the shoes could end being too large to fill.

Final Thoughts

I wish I had a crystal ball that could help answer the pivotal question about the injuries and how many minutes you should expect from Arsenal’s captain over the next 2-3 seasons. That would make this a much easier decision to make.

If he was going to go back to generally available and healthy for the vast majority of matches I think that giving him a 2+1 extension on top of his current deal would be a pretty easy decision. We unfortunately don’t have that and have to deal with this uncertainty.

For Arsenal because they are in such a healthy financial position coming off the Premier League title and Champions League final run, they should hopefully feel no pressure to make a decision here and be willing to be comfortable if it comes to it letting him become a free agent at the end of his contract.

Arsenal get a fair amount of criticism for being poor sellers (Arsenal’s record sale is still Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain) and that is because they often sell only when they are comfortable that the player isn’t going to make a major first team contribution. That’s a poor way to operate when selling is a key pillar for revenue generation but it is probably the more optimal way of being able to build a strong team capable of winning things.

If Arsenal wanted to sell now they probably could get a new record sales fee, it may not be at their ask or even at the fan floor level but if they were truly motivated to sell could make that happen.

My opinion is that this is not the optimal path for Arsenal to take. I think that Arsenal should be open to the idea of a sale, but it should be a valuation that has this make a ton of sense for them and funds the future buy to try and make the team better 2-4 years from now and keeping this title window open longer.

I also believe that while this 2 years remaining is often the best time to try and extend, it isn’t here and being willing to ride the risk of waiting a year will give the team pivotal information if they don’t have a buyer at a high asking price. If you go this path and Ødegaard has an amazing year, you’ll end up paying more 12 months from now than if you locked him up now, that is a real risk here. You also protect yourself from the downside that the injuries are not just freak one-off occurrences and that he is fully in the decline phase, you would have loved to sell now if that ends up the case but that is also the risk you accept here.

Overall the last contract that Odegaard signed took him to just about that perfect age and covered what should be his main prime years as a midfielder. I think that when Arsenal inked that deal they would have done it with the idea that they would be totally comfortable having him see it out completely and leaving as a free agent.

Given the options of selling low, extending now, or taking a season to wait and see, I am going to pick the wait and see path.