Odegaard on "frustrating" result

After we swapped places with Manchester City at the top of the table following our 3-1 defeat at Emirates Stadium, Martin Odegaard has urged everyone to “stay calm”.

Second-half goals from Jack Grealish and Erling Haaland ended our hopes of claiming a positive result after Bukayo Saka had cancelled out Kevin De Bruyne’s opener, and ensured we slipped from the top of the table for the first time since August.

But despite that setback, the skipper believes we should treat the recent three-game winless run the same as we did our lengthy winning streaks earlier in the campaign to try and recover as soon as possible.

“We know there’s a long way to go, we’ve said it after every game we’ve won,” he said. “We have to stay calm, keep working hard and take it game by game. It’s the same now when you lose, we need to just come back on Saturday and get a win again, that’s all that matters.

“The good thing is that the next one comes around very quickly. Just change the chip, look for the next one and come back.”

Heeding the request from Martin beforehand, Emirates Stadium was rocking throughout the evening as our Gooners were loud, proud and full of encouragement during the rollercoaster of a game.

That was the one enjoyable aspect of the night for our captain, who admits is rueing the missed chances we created which could have turned the game on its head.

“It was a good game [between] two good teams, an unbelievable atmosphere,” he reflected. 

“It was nice to play in, but it was of course a frustrating result. I think we did a lot of good things but in front of goal, we weren’t good enough. That’s frustrating but at the same time, we did a lot of good things, so we have to take those.

 

“I think everyone had a feeling that we were doing well [at half-time], that we had a lot of space to play [in]. We needed a few adjustments to improve a few things. In general, I thought the game we played was pretty okay, but in front of goal it wasn’t good enough.

“Thank you so much to everyone who came and for everything they did to help us today. We’ll work very hard to give them something to hopefully be happy about on Saturday.”