Dimitar Berbatov slams Tottenham defending for Odegaard goal against Arsenal

By Lee Connor

Tottenham had a nightmare of a first half against Arsenal today and former striker Dimitar Berbatov was critical of his old team’s defending.

In a one-sided opening 45 minutes, Arsenal went into the break with a comfortable 2-0 lead. Bukayo Saka’s deflected cross had been fumbled into his own goal by Hugo Lloris to open the scoring. However, there wasn’t much Lloris could do about the second from Martin Odegaard.

Odegaard drilled low into the corner from outside the box to leave Lloris helpless. However, watching the game from afar, Berbatov couldn’t believe Tottenham allowed a player like Odegaard to get a shot off.

“You don’t let players like Odegaard shoot. You can leave a right back to shoot. But you don’t leave the star man, the captain, on his left foot to shoot from a position like that,” Berbatov said on Premierleague.com.

Odegaard has been in fine goalscoring form all season long with Arsenal. As well as his usual assists, Odegaard has started adding a number of goals to his stats sheet as well.

TBR’s View: Tottenham naive in dealing with Odegaard

This is a great little observation this from Berbatov. Yes, we all know Martin Odegaard is a tricky player to deal with but Spurs could have done so much better with this one.

They backed off and backed off, and then Cristian Romero did his best Virgil van Dijk impression to simply allow the ball to be rocketed towards goal.

Of course, it was a fine finish from Odegaard. But small margins matter a lot in Premier League football and if a Spurs player gets out to Odegaard, the goal might not happen.