Worse than Tomiyasu: Arteta’s 55-touch Arsenal passenger was “outmatched” vs Man City clash last night
Arsenal’s Premier League title challenge took a serious dent as Manchester City emerged as 3-1 victors at the Emirates last night.
Heading into the interval with the scores tied at 1-1 following goals from Kevin De Bruyne and Bukayo Saka, Gunners boss Mikel Arteta would have been confident of pushing to secure a crucial win.
Takehiro Tomiyasu came in for Ben White at right back in the hope that he could add something different to the Englishman, yet his performance was woeful. Tom Dutton said it was a “bad night” for the player and by losing possession 17 times and completing just 70% of his passes, he was a major weakness in the Arsenal backline.
The Japanese full-back will rue not taking his chance tonight, especially with a potential opportunity there for more regular starting roles in the coming weeks to rest White and his performance let Arteta down badly.
However, captain Martin Odegeaard was the biggest letdown, especially considering the enormity of the occasion and just how little he offered to the team.
How did Martin Odegaard perform against Man City?
This season, the midfielder is ranked as the club’s second-best performer in the Premier League via Sofascore, while registering 13 goal contributions – eight goals and five assists – and taking his game to a new level in the process.
Against City, it was a different story, with the Danish star struggling with the intensity of the game and alongside Jorginho and Granit Xhaka, being “completely outmatched” in the words of writer Muhammad Butt.
He received a Sofascore rating of 5.9/10 – the second worst in the game, taking just 55 touches throughout the full game and completing only 38 accurate passes – a success rate of 88%.
The Norwegian passenger’s attacking input was limited to just the one key pass while having two shots blocked and failing to deliver either an accurate cross or succeed with an attempted dribble and these stats sum up his performance going forward.
