Arsenal: Martin Odegaard allows team-mates to start dreaming about title win... on one condition

Arsenal captain Martin Odegaard has told his team-mates to dream about winning the title — but warned they cannot afford to take their eye off the ball against Bournemouth tomorrow.

The Gunners are top of the Premier League and one point ahead of second-placed Manchester City, who have a game in hand.

Arsenal have just three matches to go, starting at home against Bournemouth tomorrow, and Odegaard says the squad are focused on themselves and not what City can do as they bid to end the club’s 20-year wait to win the title.

Bournemouth are 10th in the table but, since claiming their first league win of the season in October, only the current top four have earned more points than them.

“I think you can dream, of course you can do that and I think you should,” said Odegaard. “We all do that, we’ve had that dream all season and that’s fine.

“But also it’s important to stay focused and to stay in the moment. We need to just concentrate on what we can do, and that’s win our games.

“We need to take it game by game now, just make sure we do our job, and then hopefully good things will happen. The only way to do that, though, is by staying focused on our job and go out to win the games, and then we will see.”

Arsenal can put the pressure on City by beating Bournemouth in the day’s lunchtime kick-off, even if only for a few hours, as Pep Guardiola’s side are in action at 5.30pm, when they host Wolves.

The Gunners will go into tomorrow’s match full of confidence after derby wins over Chelsea and Tottenham last week.

Mikel Arteta’s side had to dig deep to see off Spurs, and Odegaard admitted it was nice for them to silence their critics.

“It meant a lot to us, it was a big game, and massive for all the supporters,” he said. “The support we had again on the day was unbelievable. In a derby it’s always a nice moment to be able to celebrate together.

Martin Odegaard

“A lot of people were saying some stuff before the game, saying we were going to lose, so it was nice to be able to share that moment together with our supporters at the end of the game. We knew it was a big one.”

Arsenal faded at this stage of the title race last season, but this time around they have managed to stay strong under Arteta. The Gunners lost just one league game last month and Odegaard insists they are loving the pressure.

“I feel like we are all enjoying the moment,” he said. “We learned a lot from last year as well, what it means to be here, to deal with the situation and all the games.

“I feel like we have improved a lot from last season in this way as well. The only thing we can do now is keep doing what we are doing.

“You can see we enjoy being up there and fighting for something. We enjoy playing these big games and that’s where you want to be.”

Martin Odegaard speaks exclusively in every Arsenal matchday programme, available to buy online at programme.arsenal.com