The experiences of our young team can make up for a lack of medals

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW MARTIN ODEGAARD

- Malik Ouzia

THE FIRST month after the Premier League's winter break was billed as exam season for Arsenal, the unexpected Christmas leaders, momentum checked by half-term, facing a fixture list littered with big tests.

And so it is both alarming and, in hindsight, somewhat amusing to learn how close their captain, Martin Odegaard, came to missing the most important of them with what might, on a schoolboy's sick-note, have been termed a dicky tummy.

"I started to feel a bit ill in the evening, just after dinner," Odegaard (left) tells Standard Sport, of the night before last month's critical north London derby.

"Then I started throwing up, I did all night. I was a bit scared because when I first woke up in the morning - well, I didn't really sleep much - 1 didn't feel good."

Pre-match nerves?

"No, not really!" he laughs. "I'm usually pretty calm before the game.

Maybe it was something I ate but I was a bit stressed that I was going to miss it. Then, suddenly, I just got better, managed to eat and the doctor and nutritionist helped a lot. I got there in the end."