Odegaard on fitness, free-kicks and Rambo reunion

Before every game at Emirates Stadium, Martin Odegaard lifts the lid on the mood in the camp via his captain’s notes published in the matchday programme.

Ahead of this afternoon’s meeting with Southampton, he gives an update on his injury, his relief at seeing us score a free-kick against PSG and what it’ll be like to see Aaron Ramsdale again. Here’s a snippet:

I just wanted to start with the latest on my injury and rehab. In the last week or so I’ve made really good progress. I’m getting better and better by the day and feel it’s going well. When you feel like things are moving forward, it gives you motivation to do more and more, and work harder.

Today is our last game before another international break, so that gives me some more time to work on the rehab, too. Hopefully it won’t be much longer; I think we will know more as soon as I get out on the training pitches and we see how my ankle responds to that. At the moment it’s progressing well and it looks better than we were thinking, but we’ve still got to take every day as it comes.

Anyway, it looks as though the team don’t really need me at the moment! We have been playing so well lately and got another good result on Tuesday against Paris Saint-Germain. We gave away hardly anything and it was another solid and strong performance. We played really well in the first half, we were good on the ball, scored a couple and could have had more. We didn’t concede a lot of chances – they had a couple of openings with Hakimi, but apart from that we showed again how solid we are. It was a good performance in a lot of different areas.

It was good to see us score a direct free kick as well – finally! It has been a long time since we last scored one, I think it was my one at Burnley a few years ago, and we have spoken about that as a group. To be honest, we don’t get too many chances from free-kicks in those positions. I’ve spoken with the set-piece coach about this as well, and we looked back at last season, and noticed we didn’t have a lot of chances in good positions to shoot.

They are hard to score from, but the more you get, the more chance you have. It’s an important part of set pieces as well, and it’s something I work on a lot, as do a few of the players, so we’re just waiting for those chances now.

This is our last game before the next round of internationals. We want to go into that with a winning feeling, and we will need you all behind us today to give us the energy to get the result. It’s our fourth home game in a row, and we never take your support for granted. We know how much commitment you give throughout the season, and it really does make a huge difference to us – we’d love to hear the Emirates as noisy as possible again today.

It will be good to see Aaron Ramsdale again today. He’s a really great guy who was a big character in the dressing room during his time with us. We spent some great times together, and obviously we all wish him the best for this season – just not today, of course!

Read the rest of Martin’s notes, as well as a host of other fantastic content, by buying the Arsenal v Southampton programme either around the stadium or online – or get a subscription to receive every edition through your door.