Theo Walcott believes Martin Odegaard ‘needed a kick up the backside’ and warned the Arsenal captain faces a battle to regain his place in Mikel Arteta’s team.<\/p>\n
Odegaard missed the thumping 4-1 victory over Tottenham on Sunday with a knee injury that has kept him out of action since October.<\/p>\n
The Norwegian has effectively been replaced in the side by Eberechi Eze, who will be difficult to dislodge after his stunning hat-trick propelled the Gunners to a north London derby win.<\/p>\n
Walcott said Odegaard would have been watching Eze’s superb display with concern as he hopes to regain his place when he returns.<\/p>\n
‘What was really nice to see is when you have a bench celebrating that much as well,’ Walcott said on It’s Called Soccer on The Overlap US.<\/p>\n
‘They’re all on the same page, they are, however, deep down, Martin Odegaard will be thinking: “Oh, this is tough!”
\nMartin Odegaard has been out of action since October but could return for Arsenal this week
\nTheo Walcott believes Odegaard needed a kick up the backside but said he may struggle to regain his place<\/p>\n
Walcott however feels Eze’s form while deputising for Odegaard will spur the Norwegian on.<\/p>\n
‘Sometimes you become a better player when you’re injured sometimes, when you’re losing games,’ he added.<\/p>\n
‘But at this moment in time, he’s becoming a worse player. And you can’t forget how good Odegaard is, and that’s the mad truth, but we’ll see a side of Odegaard we’ve not seen.<\/p>\n
‘I think he’s needed this kick up the backside, I’ll be brutally honest.<\/p>\n
‘It will be brilliant for him because it’s happened to Trossard and all of a sudden Trossard is someone different now so I think it’ll do him good.<\/p>\n
‘Everyone is getting pushed right now at Arsenal now and we’re in a good place, a better place, an incredible place.’<\/p>\n
Odegaard was on the verge of making the squad for the Spurs game but is expected to make his long-awaited return against either Bayern Munich on Wednesday or at Chelsea on Sunday.<\/p>\n
‘We are going to have a meeting now to decide as well on Martin,’ Arteta said.<\/p>\n
‘He was very close for the previous game. We are hopeful that tomorrow he can be in the squad as well.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Theo Walcott believes Martin Odegaard ‘needed a kick up the backside’ and warned the Arsenal captain faces a battle to regain his place in Mikel Arteta’s team. Odegaard missed the thumping 4-1 victory over Tottenham on Sunday with a knee injury that has kept him out of action since October. The Norwegian has effectively been …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11421,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-epl-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/evutisblog.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/104182167-15325845-image-a-10_1764096538782.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/evutisblog.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/evutisblog.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/evutisblog.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evutisblog.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evutisblog.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11420"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/evutisblog.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11422,"href":"https:\/\/evutisblog.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11420\/revisions\/11422"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evutisblog.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/evutisblog.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evutisblog.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evutisblog.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}