Martin \u00d8degaard has pushed back on criticism of his captaincy after Arsenal\u2019s squad confirmed him as leader for the 2025\u201326 season.<\/p>\n
The Norway international has built his career on blocking out external noise. After a difficult spell at Real Madrid, \u00d8degaard enjoyed a successful period following his permanent move to Arsenal four years ago. Last season he experienced a dip in form as injuries and the birth of his first child combined to complicate his campaign.<\/p>\n
Tony Adams publicly questioned Mikel Arteta\u2019s decision to persist with \u00d8degaard as captain given those recent struggles. Arteta answered by saying the squad had unanimously voted for \u00d8degaard to remain captain for the new season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is true that we voted on it,\u201d the Norway international told VG. \u201cIt was ultimately his [Arteta\u2019s] choice anyway. It is a nice confirmation to get it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pressed directly on Adams\u2019s remarks, \u00d8degaard was clear about his approach to outside opinion. \u201cI don\u2019t care that much. Everyone is allowed to have their own opinion and say what they want. I live with that. You can\u2019t care what everyone says, there will be a lot of positive and negative things that can affect me. It\u2019s important to just block it out, I\u2019ve done it my whole career.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Arsenal\u2019s most recent match against Liverpool, Gabriel Magalh\u00e3es wore the armband because \u00d8degaard was only fit enough to make the bench. The attacking midfielder had suffered a heavy blow to his shoulder a week earlier and had been a doubt to feature. \u00d8degaard was able to appear as a substitute for the final 20 minutes.<\/p>\n
Following that appearance he linked up with Norway for the September World Cup qualifiers. The captaincy vote and \u00d8degaard\u2019s public reaction underline how the player and club have chosen to address questions about leadership and form going into the 2025\u201326 season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00d8degaard insists he will block out criticism after squad vote confirmed him captain for 2025\u201326. He.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2617,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[592,966],"class_list":["post-2618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","tag-gabriel-magalhaes","tag-martin-odegaard-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}