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 third and final Champions League home group game against Lens, Martin discusses his recent absence, the Brentford result and ensuring we get a better result against the French side than in our previous meeting:
The last few weeks missing those games were tough for me because I don’t like being away from the team, and watching the games from home is not what I like either.
I had a bit of bad luck, because first of all there was an issue with my hip, then while I was dealing with that I got a concussion as well, which ruled me out of a couple of games too. Then on top of that I got sick, so I had a few rough weeks, but the most important thing is that I’m back now and feeling better.
I missed some games for the national team too, and I never want to do that either, but we had already missed out on qualification, so maybe the timing could have been worse. I was able to stay here and focus on my recovery.
Either way, I’m back and ready now, and it was great to come back into the team with a win on Saturday. It was a big goal from Kai, and everyone was so happy for him. He deserves that moment, it’s been difficult for him at times, but he’s been working so hard and he’s a big part of this team. He’s a great guy too and he deserved that goal, I was so happy for him.
Tonight it’s about the Champions League, and again we have another big target to aim for. We know we can win the group tonight, so there’s a lot to play for. To be able to do that at home is great, so hopefully we can make it a beautiful night.
We have to improve from when we played Lens in France though. They are a physical team, and in some ways similar to Brentford in the way they defend well, have five at the back, and organise themselves. They can go to man-to-man at times with the press, like Brentford did, and make it physical too. We learnt a lot from that first game in France, now we have to match them on the physical side. We want to be on the front foot, make them have to do the running, and then hopefully we can get the result we need.
It will be huge if we can guarantee winning the group tonight, it basically means we have done our job in Europe until it starts again in February. So that’s our target, and it’s another chance to show our strength at home. We love being here, we love these Champions League nights at the Emirates, where we have a great connection with you. We’d love another special atmosphere for the game tonight
Read the rest of Martin's notes, as well as a host of other fantastic content, by buying a copy of the Arsenal v Lens programme either around the stadium or online
You can also subscribe to get every issue this season delivered straight to your door each matchday.
Copyright 2024 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.
