There’s a contingent of twitter “experts”, who are staunch believers that Odegaard is not overlapping enough, thus holding Saka back. They believe ESR or Havertz’s greater movement and willingness to overlap, will diminish the effectiveness of doubling up on Saka.
What they fail to answer to is how that would solve our continuous problems with central access? We have not managed to find our 8s all season and I see that as a much bigger issue, than pointing the blame at Odegaard and wanting to move him for inferior options. I’m all for greater movement and rotations in our front 5, but Odegaard has reached heights none of the other midfield options has come close to. I don’t see anyone replicating his finishing and moving Ode to the left, will limit his goalscoring.
how that would solve our continuous problems with central access?
Because a runner in the 8 let’s Saka and Martinelli drift centrally more often (without losing the width). More difficult to mark in terms of a pressing system because its a far more fluid arrangement, but also a qualitative superiority by getting Saka and Martinelli closer to goal.
People talk about how good he is with Saka but don’t consider how good he could be with Martinelli. I firmly believe he has the potential to be a prolific goal scorer but we’ve never given him the dynamics on the left to fully exploit that imo and even with that handicap he still delivered 15 league goals last season. He should undoubtedly be the one taking the most shots on our team.
Yeah that’s exactly what people fail to realize. There would be a need for some adaptation as our lcm usually has more defensive responsibilities and our rcm has more pressing responsibilities ( and tbh odegaard is our best presser BUT that should not ve the reason to be the starter). Martinelli is our best finisher along with trossard yet he never gets isolated as we do not hace a proper “passer” for him. His output with someone that could feed the ball to him would skyrocket. And odegaard also has an extreme bias for his left foot, which is a main cause for his lack of overlaps. Basically him and saka ocupy the same position if you look at the heat maps.
I could keep going about this, but I really believe either esr or fabio should be playing at rcm. Even with great output, Saka could do much more. And odegaard while great and one of my favorite players should have a different role, more of an enabler due to his skillset imo. Martinelli should be our top scorer yet he’s doing dogwork on the wing this season if we’re being honest, having to take on 1 or 2 players each time just to get in.
There’s a contingent of twitter “experts”, who are staunch believers that Odegaard is not overlapping enough, thus holding Saka back. They believe ESR or Havertz’s greater movement and willingness to overlap, will diminish the effectiveness of doubling up on Saka.
What they fail to answer to is how that would solve our continuous problems with central access? We have not managed to find our 8s all season and I see that as a much bigger issue, than pointing the blame at Odegaard and wanting to move him for inferior options. I’m all for greater movement and rotations in our front 5, but Odegaard has reached heights none of the other midfield options has come close to. I don’t see anyone replicating his finishing and moving Ode to the left, will limit his goalscoring.
Because a runner in the 8 let’s Saka and Martinelli drift centrally more often (without losing the width). More difficult to mark in terms of a pressing system because its a far more fluid arrangement, but also a qualitative superiority by getting Saka and Martinelli closer to goal.
People talk about how good he is with Saka but don’t consider how good he could be with Martinelli. I firmly believe he has the potential to be a prolific goal scorer but we’ve never given him the dynamics on the left to fully exploit that imo and even with that handicap he still delivered 15 league goals last season. He should undoubtedly be the one taking the most shots on our team.
Yeah that’s exactly what people fail to realize. There would be a need for some adaptation as our lcm usually has more defensive responsibilities and our rcm has more pressing responsibilities ( and tbh odegaard is our best presser BUT that should not ve the reason to be the starter). Martinelli is our best finisher along with trossard yet he never gets isolated as we do not hace a proper “passer” for him. His output with someone that could feed the ball to him would skyrocket. And odegaard also has an extreme bias for his left foot, which is a main cause for his lack of overlaps. Basically him and saka ocupy the same position if you look at the heat maps.
I could keep going about this, but I really believe either esr or fabio should be playing at rcm. Even with great output, Saka could do much more. And odegaard while great and one of my favorite players should have a different role, more of an enabler due to his skillset imo. Martinelli should be our top scorer yet he’s doing dogwork on the wing this season if we’re being honest, having to take on 1 or 2 players each time just to get in.
Are you suggesting Ode gets benched?