Odegaard on title dreams and enjoying the moment

Every home game, Martin Odegaard gives you his thoughts on the goings-on around the club in his captain’s notes for the matchday programme.

Ahead of our penultimate home game of the season against Bournemouth, Martin chats about our recent wins against Chelsea and Tottenham, celebrating another derby day win with our supporters and the mentality going into the final few games as we push for the title.

We have had a couple of great wins lately, but we need to follow that up with another big performance today. 

It was a really good performance from everyone against Chelsea last time out at the Emirates, a really strong performance all round. It’s always a tough game against them, they are a good team with lots of quality. So to play the way we did, and dominate the game against Chelsea was really pleasing. I was happy with my performance too, I managed to create some chances and get a couple of assists – which I had been looking for! I had been waiting a little bit for that, so it was a nice way to get the win, a big win and it set us up for the Tottenham game too.

We knew there was a lot on that game, but honestly we felt quite relaxed going into it. I would say it was more excitement than nerves. It was a big game that you love to play, we were eager to get out on the pitch. 

We enjoyed the celebrations at the end, you could see it meant a lot to us. It was a big game, and we know how massive it is for all the supporters. The support we had again on the day was unbelievable. In a derby I think it’s always a nice moment to be able to celebrate together, so it was nice to be able to share that moment with our supporters at the end of the game. We knew it was a big one.

It's three more points, it keeps us top of the table and we can still achieve what we want to this season. We can dream, of course you can do that and I think you should. We all do that, we’ve had that dream all season and that’s fine. But also it’s important to stay focused and to stay in the moment. We need to just concentrate on what we can do, and that’s win our games. We need to take it game by game now, just make sure we do our job, fight until the end, and then hopefully good things will happen. 

There are just three games to go, and every game, every action could be so crucial now. I feel like we are all enjoying the moment. We learned a lot from last year, what it means to be here, to deal with the situation and all the games. We have improved a lot from last season in that way. The only thing we can do now is keep doing what we are doing. 

You can see we enjoy being up there and fighting for something. We enjoy playing these big games and that’s where you want to be. That’s an important element, to enjoy it and make the most out of every day.

Read the rest of Martin's notes, as well as a host of other fantastic content, by buying a copy of the Arsenal v Bournemouth programme either around the stadium or online