Ødegaard + Zubimendi: Redundant or the Midfield We’ve Been Dreaming Of?

Diving deeper into how the midfield functioned against Aston Villa

‘They occupy the same space’, ‘They are stepping on each other’, ‘They are throwing off the balance of the team’, ‘They are redundant’.

This was a common refrain and takeaway from a sizable portion of the online Arsenal fanbase after watching Martin Zubimendi and Martin Odegaard play together against Aston Villa. On my first view of the match, I was quite surprised to see people come away with this opinion having viewed the overall performances from both players (but especially Odgaard) as one of the more positives on a tough Saturday.

In my own circle of influences, one of the bigger voices that I listen to for even handed and not reactionary analysis is friend of Cannon Stats, Clive Palmer. His reaction after the match really surprised me and he put together a very well stated case for the opposite view from my own take. Here is a clip from him on the Arsenal Vision instant reaction podcast explaining his view.

When Clive talks, I listen and this combined with many other voices got me to take a keen and deeper view to look for this as I rewatched this match today.

Before we get too much further it would be negligent if I didn’t link to the deep dives that I have done looking at what Arsenal have missed with Odegaard out and into the early season analysis of Eberechi Eze playing in that advanced role for Arsenal.

These articles give a lot of important and helpful context of some of the bigger picture items that I won’t be talking about here in this article and they are something that without a doubt underpin this discussion.

There is also a bit of an unspoken topic here that is just under the surface, where there is a feeling in the Arsenal fanbase that Odegaard is a problem for Arsenal and that there is a way to improve upon what he brings to the team. I have written about some of the critiques that are common and I think that they largely miss the mark but that feeling is out there and while not universal it isn’t a tiny minority that feel that way. Eze fits into this as the most obvious and exciting option to fix what many see as ailing Arsenal.

While much of this isn’t about Odegaard vs Eze, given that this is about ‘balance’ and how Zubimendi and Odegaard fit together, that is definitely something that sits just below here given that we have seen several weeks of Eze playing in that role while Odegaard has been out.

I want to get into a bit more of the actual match analysis now.

Let’s start looking at Zubimendi’s actions and the positioning of Odegaard here for these.

Here is what it looks like for Odegaard.

For this, I tried to include just about everything and not just pick a few to make sure that I am not cherry picking anything to make my view stronger here. When I watched back the match, I tried to pick all of the controlled-on ball actions and take a screen shot for both players here.

There are a few situations where I think you could say that Odegaard is coming and takes the ball off of a player that maybe you would think he doesn’t have to, but this much more the exception than the rule in my opinion.

This one is a little more borderline but maybe you can make the case that Odegaard can stay higher up and let Zubimendi handle the buildup.

In this spot in the second half, Zubimendi and Rice probably don’t need him coming all the way over to take the ball switch it out to the right side.

That’s really it for the situations that stuck out to me and I think it is much more one situation than a true pattern here.

I don’t claim to be a tactical mastermind but when I have watched Arsenal one of the major strengths of this team and the positional system that Mikel Arteta is a proponent of is that it is incredibly flexible giving players lots of freedom to interchange and take up a number of different positions with players doing many rotations.

Arsenal’s build up shape is often 3 players (occasionally with a 4th dropping) in the first line and then with a line of 4 in front of that. It more or less looks something like this:

This doesn’t change that often, but what does change is that who is in each spot does change. This shows up in the screen shots, sometimes it is Zubimendi in the deepest spot, sometimes it is Odegaard, sometimes it is Declan Rice or another defender that slides over. It is similar with the other spots where the players will rotate looking generate openings and options.

It is different with Odegaard in the midfield because he would be more willing to drop further back than Eze when he has played the role, but that doesn’t give Arsenal’s buildup line more players it just changes where some of the people are standing.

The average touch locations ignore where a player is off the ball not touching it but they can still help illustrate the general shapes that a team takes up in possession and I think that they work pretty well here matching what I saw looking at the match.

Zubimendi and Rice were primarily the deeper of the midfielders here, but this wasn’t static with everyone given freedom within the structure to take up positions where they can find space. Looking at the touches of each of the midfielders you can see that overall, it does look fairly balanced, Rice primarily on the left with 83 total touches, Zubimendi primarily through the middle with 59 touches, and Odegaard primarily on the right with 80 touches.

This matches the story you’d tell of the roles that they play as well, Rice is more of a box to box and that matches with him having nearly an even number of touches in the defensive and final third. Zubimendi is primarily the deep lying play maker and his touches are mostly central and concentrated in the defensive and middle thirds. Odegaard is given more of the attacking responsibility and more of his touches come in the attacking half and he has more final third touches than defensive third touches.

Arsenal as a whole also were not nearly as unbalanced from left to right as it might have seemed in the emotions at full time. Overall, for the match it was a 35% left, 43% right split.

In the defensive half it was a 34% left, 36% right split. In the attacking half it was a 36% left, 48% right split.

The biggest divergence here was that there was very little wide left touches here and part of that could be down to wanting to play from the right but some of that can probably go down to Eze having an ineffective showing overall and not feeling particularly natural hugging the touchline.

In the first half the touches were 35 for Saka compared to 13 for Eze. He just didn’t get on the ball with the same regularity. Looking at the fullbacks and midfielders, it was 24 for Calafiori and 35 for Ben White in the first half and it was 37 for Rice and 38 for Odegaard. Maybe a slight favoring towards White over Calafiori but not nearly as extreme here.

In the second half Trossard came on, and he was able to get on the ball more often registering 22 touches which is the same amount that Saka had in the second half.

Arsenal are going to need to adapt here fitting in the players that are returning from injuries, and it isn’t always going to be a smooth process. That was the same when Arsenal were adapting to playing without the injured players and were struggling mightily to be able to create chances from open play. Even now, the team is needing to come up with new patterns and adaptions after taking out two very good ball playing center backs that have years of playing together.

I am happy that I went through and watched the match back through this lens, I still don’t think that this was Arsenal at their best, but it wasn’t a bad performance from Arsenal. This is something that we talked about on the podcast and it doesn’t have to be a situation where we only have one way of playing, and having the options to mix and match different midfielders will help to solve different problems and help to keep players fresher throughout the season. This midfield of Zubimendi behind Rice and Odegaard will probably feature the most often the rest of the season and I think that makes sense as it is likely the strongest overall option, with tons of quality and complimentary skills rather than redundancy.

It may feel a bit frustrating now, but I am excited coming out of this to see how this team can round into shape and go into the second half of the season.