Will Martin Odegaard reach the heights of Frank Lampard by the end of his Arsenal career?
The Arsenal and Norwegian international Martin Odegaard, 24, currently has eight goals and five assists for the gunners this season, his current career best return and we’re only halfway through the season.
At his current rate he is on track to score 17 goals by the season conclusion, a tally Frank Lampard only managed at the age of 27 in the prime of his career, so, if you look at both players are there a few similarities between the two?
Football fans have always known the talent Martin holds due to his record breaking first appearance for Real Madrid in 2015; becoming the youngest player to play La Liga football for Los Blancos and replacing none other than Cristiano Ronaldo!
Deemed ‘the wonderkid’ must however have held a massive pressure for the young playmaker, who actually had his best return on loan seasons away from the Santiago Bernabeu (Vitesse, Real Sociedad and obviously Arsenal).
This year he has noticeably added a goal aspect to his game, a key reason why Arsenal is currently top of the league; there has even been some comparisons to the likes of De Bruyne at Manchester City this year.
This comparison is based on the fact that both players take up the inside right channel for their respective teams and take up similar positions in game, yet these players hold different qualities.
De Bruyne is a ‘volume-chance creator’ who produces lots of high quality of crosses into the box, which is not Odegaard’s style, he is much more of a ‘situational-chance creator’ who creates fewer chances but when he does is often of higher quality in the final third.
This technique is shown during his opening assist against Liverpool, a perfectly weighted through ball for Martinelli to finish without breaking stride; or with his stunning round-the-corner assist against Brighton.
However, Odegaard (5) does not have an awful lot of assists when compared to De Bruyne (11) but what is interesting is he ranks third in the league for shot creating actions/pre-assists with 5.1.
Lastly being left footed makes Odegaard a different type of player than the right footed De Bruyne who both seem to master alternative sides of the attacking game.
The comparison to Lampard therefore comes from Odegaard’s off-the-ball positions and habit for scoring goals from midfield with late surges into the opponent’s box.
I am not saying that he is at the ex-Chelsea legends level yet, however, with the current best expected goals for midfielders in the league, he may be showing a lot of similar traits with the league’s greatest ever goalscoring midfielder…
Lampard scored 41 out-of-the-box goals for the Blues, he also was a fantastic dead-ball specialist which we haven’t seen much from Odegaard, but if this is developed in his game, I think he could see that gap close.
In our December 3-0 friendly against AC Milan, saw a glimpse of that underlying Freekick ability of our attacking midfielder.
And he scored a fantastic outside the box goal away against Tottenham too in our 2-0 win!
Not only this, but both players are/were captains and boast a very intelligent football IQ (Lampard’s IQ is 150, one of the highest in football), therefore they even appear slightly similar personality wise.
And of course, both wear/wore the number 8!
To summarise; Martin Odegaard is neither De Bruyne nor Frank Lampard (two icons of the league), he is his own unique talented player and will need to massively improve to reach those heights.
Yet at 24, I do believe that will have a superb Arsenal career ahead of him. Of the two icons, I believe he is much closer to the iconic Chelsea goalscoring midfielder than to Manchester City’s master assister.
Until next time Gooners.
@benedict_hobbs
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Martin Odegaard reminds me of the classical slightly built, technical, hard working attacking midfielders like Robert Prosinecki, Jari Litmenan and Dejan Savicevic. Just oozes with dynamic running and confident touches. The closest modern player is Luka Modric.
Ugh. Lampard was an overweight and overrated player (and now overweight and overrated manager), who scored mainly penalties and deflected goals. Not even close to comparable.
And, crucially, some character and keen to EARN his wages!
This was in reply to Anders( below my post)
Haha @NB
..” an overweight and overrated player” who managed to score 10 goals or more (best 22) in ten consecutive years for Chelsea.
I fact if you count all competitions he scored 19 or over for six of those seasons…
Fat Frank indeed!
NB, can you break down your comments and tell me how many penalties he scored and how many deflected goals he scored from his total amount of goals, as I’m sure you have the details?
Here’s a helping hand for you:
He scored 211 goals of which 43 were penalties… how many of the remaining 168 were deflections?
Odegaard is becoming “Özil” with a defensive work rate added 😉
Yes. Odegaard is a high-pressing Ozil to me, because of his through balls and heat maps
In my opinion, Lampard is more of a sharp-shooter and Fabregas is more of a tempo dictator. The author’s observation about De Bruyne as a volume-chance creator and frequent crosser is spot-on
Odegaard scored plenty of goals this season, but I don’t think he’ll be as productive as Lampard was. He also mostly carries the ball diagonally to the left side, instead of dictating the tempo as Fabregas and Cazorla did
Fabregas created tonnes of chances (got loads of direct assists) and was a significant goalscorer when he was with us. He could do it all..
I don’t remember him producing as many assists as Ozil did in one season or scoring goals as Lampard did
15 and 15 in 30 league games the year before he left. His mistake was leaving when he did. I honestly think he’d be thought of as one of the best in pl history had he stayed few more years, because our side was built around him.
It would be interesting to see his chelsea stats as well, in order to get the complete PL picture.
He was up there with the very best in my opinion.
Like that reply Anders, couldn’t have put it better.
Lampard?….I respect lampard and admire his playing day and record but to compare them with different style of play.lampard is a physical man ..a midfielder who timing his run..odegard is more modric,ozil,sadun,Henry Marcus,and Benjamin natahunya player from team babi sangat mahal d malaysia
Interesting and thoughtful article, even though I do not quite see Lampard in Odegaard personally, but I understand Dominics point of view.
I think others are far closer in style to MARTIN than FL though.
Eriksen, when at Spuds, would be one! Not as good but more similar in style, IMO .
I agree with that comparison
Odegaard is Ozil with a better work rate. He is still young and has a lot of time to develop his play. He will be a more complete midfielder if he improves on his strength and shooting. Being sleek doesn’t always work. Sometimes you need to be a little rough and untidy and develop the instinct for shooting especially around the 18 yard box.
The problem for Odegaard is that he lacks pace and physical,when going against tougher teams that sit back and rough us up abit he goes missing ,as seen against Everton .
Not sure where the author got the comparison between him and Lampard as they are nothing alike ,Odegaard is great in tight spaces and as fancy footwork ,Lampard was a player who could scores goals from anywhere and arrived late to power home alot of goals ,completely different kinds of midfielders .
All in all he’s done alot better this season but so have the rest of the team ,I saw someone post the other week that Odegaard as made everyone everyone else look better around him ,but maybe everyone else as made odegaard look better ,either way everyone as done their jobs so far this season .