Odegaard on why our ruthlessness could be crucial

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 today's game against Brentford, the skipper discussed our recent ruthlessness in front of goal, the boost our supporters give the team and Brentford's strengths. 

We’ve been in great form recently, and now it’s about maintaining those standards and continuing to build momentum. This league is so tough, so competitive, and every game is so important. It’s another three points available today, and that’s all that matters. That’s what we want to do, go out there, be ruthless, win the games and keep pushing onto the next one. 

Our challenge now is to keep performing how we have been lately, and raise it even higher. We always knew the quality we have in the team, and we know our top level can be amazing. We’ve shown that in the last few games, so let’s keep it going. We have to show we are able to keep it up from now on. That’s our target, but still I feel we have a lot of things we can improve, and that’s one of the good things. There are things we can work on and be even better at. We have been working hard all week looking for ways to improve. 

Brentford drew here last season, and have a great record against the top teams, so they are always a very strong team to play against. They are good on set pieces, get a lot of restarts and they look to put you under pressure with their direct play. We have to be ready for it, get the ball down and play our own game. 

We’re back at Emirates Stadium today, playing in front of our amazing supporters, and the atmosphere here for the Newcastle game was just incredible. It really was something else. I knew you would all bring the noise and you didn’t disappoint. It’s even more special under the lights playing in the evening. Coming out of the tunnel, seeing all the flags, scarves and colour, then during the game the support we had was amazing. And we really needed it because I can tell you we felt tired going into that game. After the defeat in Porto, and all the travelling from three away games, we really needed that energy you gave us. It made so much difference, and you saw that in our performance. 

At Sheffield United, I think the early goal made a big difference. Especially in a game like that, because their whole game plan is to defend, so the longer they keep that clean sheet going, the more belief they have. So of course it’s really good to get an early goal, and we didn’t stop there.

It was just a brilliant performance – what more can I say?! We destroyed them, we were ruthless in front of goal, the pressure was really good again and so was how we dealt with their direct play. We were really solid all over, up until some point in the second half when we started to do some things differently. I don’t think we intentionally relaxed at all, in fact, you would have seen in the first half that every time we scored, we got together and said to each other: "let’s go and get another one. Let’s do it again."

That’s the mentality we have in the team now, we want to keep pushing, keep playing, keep scoring goals. If we get one, we want two, then we want three. That was the mentality, and you never know whether goal difference might mean something in the end. 

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