The stats say that Ødegaard’s injury is a major problem for Arsenal – unless Eze steps up

There seem to have been more injury problems across the Premier League at the start of the 2025/26 season than in any previous year – but amidst all the bad luck, perhaps nobody has been quite as unfortunate Arsenal’s Martin Ødegaard.

The Norwegian midfielder set an unwanted record as the first Premier League player to be substituted in the first half of three consecutive matches after back-to-back shoulder injuries were immediately followed by a knee issue, and Ødegaard is now expected to miss around six weeks of football as a result.

That’s bad luck for one player, but it could be even worse for his team, who now face trying to maintain a title challenge without their captain. But how big of a deal is Ødegaard’s absence really, and do the stats say that Arsenal fans should be worried?

How important is Martin Ødegaard to Arsenal?

This isn’t the first time that Arsenal have had to make do without Ødegaard – and last season, when he missed a stretch of time due to an ankle injury, their title challenge took a huge dent with a run of one point in three matches which included defeats to Bournemouth and Newcastle United.

A slight dip in his goals and assist output (Ødegaard registered 11 goal contributions in 2024/25 compared to 22 and 18 in the preceding two seasons) had created the impression of a player short of his best form, but Arsenal simply scored more and conceded fewer when he was on the field – and he remained one of the team’s greatest creative forces.

In total, no other Arsenal player who played at least 10 full matches had as big of an impact on the scoreline of their games, with Arsenal’s goal difference improving by 0.6 per game when Ødegaard was involved, and only Bukayo Saka created more shooting chances or created more goals for his team-mates. Ødegaard may not have troubled the scoresheet directly quite as frequently, but the impact was still there.

In short, Ødegaard’s loss is significant. A stop-start first act of the 2025/26 campaign, which has resulted in just one assist and no goals thus far, had perhaps served to strengthen the notion that he wasn’t at his best or that his loss would not be so significant, but the stats tell a very different story.

Even this season, with injuries constantly forcing him from the field, Ødegaard has been creating shooting chances at just the same rate as before and it’s hard to find any statistical signs to suggest that he was playing any worse. He remains a truly crucial player in possession whose creativity and dynamic play open more avenues to the opposing goal than any other Arsenal player save for the ever-superb Saka.

Assuming that Ødegaard has a chance to make it back for November’s North London Derby, then he will miss league matches against Fulham, Crystal Palace, Burnley and Sunderland, alongside cup ties with Brighton, Atlético Madrid and Slavia Prague. Arsenal could have lost him for a harder run of fixtures, but there are some potential banana skins in there and it’s less than two years since their 2023/24 title challenge imploded due to defeats to Fulham and West Ham.

The 2025/26 title race looks set to be extremely tight, with all of the obvious contenders slipping up already – an unexpected and unnecessary defeat could be the difference between breaking a duck which has run for over 20 years or another near miss, and Arsenal are already missing both Kai Havertz and Noni Madueke, players who could have taken up some of the slack in the final third.

All of the numbers behind both Ødegaard’s performances over the past few seasons and Arsenal’s work with and without him in recent years suggest that this is a serious blow. The question is whether any of his team-mates can step forward and fill it.

Can Eberechi Eze fill the void?

With Ødegaard out and Havertz also stuck on the sidelines, Arsenal have two players who could fill the void – Mikel Merino and Eberechi Eze. There is, however, a significant difference between the two in terms of what they offer creatively.

Merino scored crucial goals after signing in January – seven times in just 28 games – and offers a more physical option in the number ten role, but he generates far fewer opportunities for those around him.

While Ødegaard generally creates a little under five chances per 90 minutes (4.80 last season, 4.88 so far this term), Merino comes in a long way below those numbers. Last season, he managed to create 2.44 shooting opportunities per 90, this season it’s down to just 1.47 so far.

He’s also a far less accurate passer and a much weaker ball-carrier. Ødegaard’s dribbling rarely receives much attention, but his 60% success rate taking a man on is high and his 3.59 successful ‘progressive carries’ per match (runs which either gain 10 yards or take the ball into the box) is among the highest marks in any major European league among midfielders. It’s a key part of his game, and gives him angles with which to attack defences and create space that other tens simply don’t have. Sufficed to say that Merino’s numbers are some way below the Premier League averages.

That leaves summer signing Eze as the only player on Arsenal’s books really capable of operating as a ‘like-for-like’ replacement for Ødegaard, but he will need to step up at some speed – Eze has not quite shown us his finest moves yet this season.

Having been eased in to his role at the Emirates – already more often a central one rather than on the left – Eze has not yet been given too much opportunity to build up a head of steam. His 3.75 shooting chances created per game is better than Merino but lags behind Ødegaard, and the markers Eze himself laid down while at Crystal Palace.

He does at least have two assists to his name, including a luscious long ball over the top to Gabriel Martinelli against Manchester City, but he has completed a full 90 minutes just once (against Newcastle United) and it would be a generous judge who said we’ve seen his best football as yet.

Eze, though, has proven that he is capable of creating chances in volume, and his technical quality is beyond question. He is a different kind of creator than Ødegaard – less direct and more subtle, perhaps, with less reliance on his ability to run with the ball and more on the precision of his final ball – but he can unlock defences, he can create opportunities out of nothing, and he can fill the role left vacant by his injured captain.

The question is whether he can do it right now, and rediscover his best form very quickly indeed. Arsenal are at the top of the table right now, but the margin for error looks razor thin – and Eze may have just become one of Mikel Arteta’s most important players.