Norway boss Stale Solbakken has given an update on Martin Odegaard’s injury, with the player seemingly absent from training on Thursday.
Following his withdrawal from the Sporting CP match with a potential injury issue, Arsenal captain Martin Odegaard appeared to be absent from the Gunners’ training session on Thursday.
A live stream of the first part of the session clearly didn’t include Odegaard, though that doesn’t necessarily confirm that he’s injured, nor that he didn’t join the session late.
Yet any hopes that Odegaard might have avoided a setback were dampened first by his absence, and then by quotes from Norway manager Stale Solbakken.
TV 2 reporter Eirik Nesset Hjelvik attended an event involving Solbakken, and reported that the manager said of Odegaard: “Martin ‘got one’ where he shouldn’t have, but I don’t think it’s [a bad one]. I think he’ll be back on the field in the not-too-distant future.
“He has made a comeback and played two 60 minutes. [Now he’s had] a small setback, but it doesn’t have to mean much.”
Even if it’s not significant, it sounds as though the midfielder is unlikely to be involved against Bournemouth this weekend.
Odegaard has obviously struggled with various injury problems throughout the current campaign, and it hasn’t helped that his return coincided with an injury for Eberechi Eze.
Had Eze been fit to start, Odegaard could have been introduced more gradually from the bench over the last couple of games. Conversely, Eze’s return to training this week has coincided with Odegaard’s new setback, so Mikel Arteta will now have the same problem again in reverse.