The sun shone in Dublin yesterday, temperatures reached 23C – unusually warm for the end of April. I spent most of the day in the back garden, reading John Connolly’s new book. I fired up the Weber and cooked some steak, then ambled into the city centre to have a couple of pints of Donegal’s finest.
Some of that was opportunity. You don’t get days like this too often here, even during the summer, but part of it was a need to switch off from the discourse online after our defeat to PSG. Just to clear, losing isn’t fun, and there were things about our performance I didn’t like. As I said in yesterday’s post-game blog, it could have been worse but for the crossbar, but we go into next week’s game down by a single goal. It’s the finest of margins with another 90 minutes to play. Did we miss an opportunity at home? Yes. It is all over? I just can’t see it that way. I might have some concerns about the task at hand, but I’m not a defeatist.
I didn’t enjoy the fact we lost, but nor could I connect with the level of anger I was seeing. Not everywhere, there was reasonable discussion to be found, but it seeped into to almost every aspect of Tuesday’s game. From a moratorium on certain players, to the fans culpability in the result. It all just felt too much for me. Welcome to the Internet, I guess.
On Martin Odegaard, I’ve said this more than once, but he’s not having his best season by a long shot. You want your captain to be pulling the strings in games like these, but it’s fair to say he struggled to have the impact you’d like. For me it’s far more constructive to think about why that might be the case rather than just write him off. I don’t get the idea he’s now a bad player, rather than a very good player in bad form. That’s a scenario that happens a lot in football.
Just so I am clear, I’m not saying these two players are the same in terms of calibre, but I remember Dennis Bergkamp having a season when he scored just 5 goals, only 3 in the Premier League. My recollection is that he had some issues with injury during that campaign (2000-01), which would go some way to explaining that lack of output and a lack of form when he did play (he had just 3 PL assists that season too). The next season he returned to something more like his ‘normal’ level and produced 14 goals and 16 assists as Arsenal won the double.
This season, which many consider below Odegaard’s best level, he has 5 goals and 10 assists in all competitions. He has suffered a significant injury, and been thrust back into regular action ever since because, as I’ve said before, our squad building left us far too reliant on him as the only creative midfielder on our books. No Emile Smith Rowe, sold. No Fabio Vieira, loaned. If you want to make the case for Ethan Nwaneri, fine, but as we’ve seen this season he’s had good games and others where – as part of his learning curve – he’s struggled to have influence. Those games have all been as a right winger, and I think it’s far more difficult to do it further back in the midfield.
In 2000-01, when Bergkamp fell below his best, Arsene Wenger also had Thierry Henry, Kanu, and Sylvain Wiltord to call on. In 2025, Mikel Arteta has nobody else in his squad to do what Odegaard can do. That, ultimately, is something you can find the manager culpable for because of how we’ve recruited and his very strong influence over that. In an ideal world, when any player is struggling with form, you look to give them a break and turn to an alternative. That player isn’t there right now – although it was interesting to see Nwaneri go to the wing when Odegaard came off against PSG and Bukayo Saka drop into the midfield role. That might have been a 5 minute Hail Mary thing, but let’s see.
Some might read this as a defence of Odegaard, but acknowledging a player isn’t at their best and trying to understand why seems reasonable to me. Especially when that player is going to be required to help us to overturn the 1-0 deficit in Paris. I think he badly needs the summer, and to draw a line under this season, but we also badly need him to find something in his locker over the next few weeks (hopefully). I’ve written before about how this is a season from which lessons need to be learned, particularly when it comes to squad building, and I think the Odegaard situation – if you want to call it that – is one of the most important ones.
As for the idea that because the fans in the stadium weren’t as raucous as the home game against Real Madrid they’re culpable to some extent for the result, please … give me a break. What could have been the difference? The pre-game build-up wasn’t punctured by an unnecessary silence for one, and we didn’t conceded after 3 minutes for another. That goal, for me at least, scratched at the wound of 2009 when we had all this pre-game hype for our semi-final against Man Utd, only for a mistake 10 minutes in to hand the opposition a goal and for all the wind to go out of our sails. Fans have long memories, as Wenger once said ‘Every defeat is a scar on my heart’, and that game left a big scar for supporters too.
Then PSG played really, really well and that adds to the worry and the anxiety, which of course has an impact on atmosphere. Nobody’s happy when you’re losing and being played off the park. It’s human nature. In the end, it wasn’t the fans who missed good chances to score, and while I understand the idea there’s a symbiotic connection between fans the team, it is primarily up to the players on the pitch to drive that, not the other way around. More scoring goals, less waving your arms at the stands, lads. Just in my humble opinion, anyway.
Right, I’m gonna leave it there for now. Have a great day wherever you are in the world.
