Martin Odegaard has revealed the Arsenal players’ ‘frustration’ over their recent performances.
Mikel Arteta’s side are of the Premier League with ten wins from 12 games and are through to the Europa League knockout stages, but the Gunners skipper says he and his teammates have been irritated by their ‘struggles’ in recent weeks.
There was no sign of frustration as they demolished Nottingham Forest 5-0 last weekend, but the 1-0 win over Leeds and the 1-1 draw with Southampton saw them produce less complete performances.
They also lost 2-0 and were outplayed by PSV Eindhoven in the Europa League and Odegaard opened up on the squad moodin his programme notes ahead of Thursday’s visit of FC Zurich, which saw the Gunners win 1-0.
Odegaard wrote: “We started the game well again, with Gabi [Martinelli]’s goal, but what was different this time was how we killed the game off. We’ve been speaking about that as a group over the past few weeks.
“We’ve had a few games where we’ve played well in the first half but the game has changed in the second half and we’ve been struggling more than we want to.
“Everyone was a bit frustrated after the past few games, even after the win over Leeds, then the draw at Southampton and the defeat at PSV.
“Everyone was frustrated with how we performed in those games, and we needed this performance last weekend to strike back.
“It’s a sign of how this team is developing that we have had a couple of games where we weren’t at our best, yet we’re still on top in the Premier League and in Europe.
“Despite that, we weren’t totally happy with what we’ve been doing, and I think we showed that on the pitch against Nottingham Forest. We knew we had more to give and we wanted to do that.”
Arsenal travel to Stamford Bridge on Sunday in another crunch Premier League clash, spiced up by them taking on their former captain Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who left the Gunners in January having fallen out with Arteta.
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