Martin Odegaard reached 250 Arsenal appearances in Wednesday’s 2-1 win at Slavia Prague, and the numbers from those games show a captain with a better win rate than any Gunners skipper since 1988/89 and a creative output only Bruno Fernandes has topped in the Premier League.
The club marked the milestone on Thursday with a look at his standout stats since he arrived from Real Madrid on an initial loan in January 2021, a move made permanent that summer.
In that time Arsenal got back into the Champions League, reached the final of the competition and won the Premier League title in May for the first time since 2004, with the Norwegian wearing the armband.
Martin Odegaard’s record as Arsenal captain
Odegaard captained the side for the first time against Southampton in April 2022 and became the permanent skipper that summer. Arsenal have finished in the top two in each of the four seasons since, and won the league last season.
The headline figure is his win rate. Arsenal have won 107 of the 164 matches he has started as captain, the best record of any Arsenal captain since the start of the 1988/89 season.
Only three captains were younger than him when they lifted the Premier League trophy: Tim Sherwood in 1995, John Terry in 2005 and 2006, and Vincent Kompany in 2012.
Vieira is next, Adams is a long way off
He is now six games short of Patrick Vieira’s total as Arsenal captain. Tony Adams, who officially took the armband at the start of 1988 and led the side in more than 500 matches, is in another league altogether.
Only one player has created more
Since his debut in January 2021, only Manchester United captain Bruno Fernandes has created more chances in the Premier League than Odegaard.
His 44 assists in that time put him eighth among Premier League players. Fernandes leads that list too, on 89, while Bukayo Saka is fourth with 56.
He is the one who moves the ball up the pitch, too. Odegaard has made 5,287 passes into the final third since his first appearance and completed 4,271 of them. Only three Premier League players have more successful passes into the final third since 2021. He also has 1,400 passes into the opposition box across his 250 games, the seventh-highest in the league over that period.
Where he ranks in the squad
Only Gabriel Magalhaes (260) and Saka (256) have played more games for the club since Odegaard’s debut. Saka is also the only Gunner with more goal contributions in that time, 132 to Odegaard’s 90, and no Arsenal player has created more chances.
Still doing the running at 250
The numbers from this season are just as telling. In the first nine Premier League games, Odegaard ranked second in the squad for high-intensity pressures (252, with 143 of them in the opposition half), second for distance covered (95.5km) and second for sprints (96).
That is the part people tend to miss. A creative No.10 who also presses like that is a big part of why he matters so much to Mikel Arteta’s side, and it matches what we saw in October, when he made Arsenal’s Player of the Month shortlist again after winning September’s prize.
Why Arsenal need the Odegaard contract sorted
The timing of all this is interesting. His deal runs until 2028, and talks over a new one have only been informal so far, with Bayern Munich discussing him internally and Arsenal reportedly open to a sale next summer if no agreement is reached.
Numbers like these make that hard to imagine. The best win rate of any Arsenal captain in more than 35 years, the second-most chances created in the league since 2021 and a work rate that still sits near the top of the squad is not a player you let walk towards his final year. Real Madrid let him go in 2021, and Arsenal have built a title-winning side around him since. Getting him tied down should be near the top of the list once the season settles.
