Odegaard: "We have to take the lessons"

After seeing our dreams of reaching the Carabao Cup final end at the hands of Newcastle United, Martin Odegaard wants him and his players to learn from the experience and improve from it.

Despite being 2-0 down after the first leg, the skipper admits he was still full of belief when he arrived at St James’ Park, and came so close to pulling us just one goal behind when he struck the post in the 18th minute. However, 50 seconds later the tie completely swung in the opposite direction when Jacob Murphy scored for the Magpies.

Despite those fine margins, Martin was honest enough to admit that we didn’t do enough to reach the final across the 180 minutes, but backed himself and his teammates to come back stronger after this setback.

Following the game, he said: “It’s a tough one to take, it’s frustrating. We had a big goal to go to the final and we believed it was possible to make it happen today but I think the way we played throughout the game and throughout the two legs we didn’t deserve it. We have to look at ourselves, improve and learn from it.

“We had a few good moments in the first half where I could’ve scored, and maybe the game would’ve been a bit different then we let them run a bit too easily a few times. They had a few big moments there and with the goal obviously.

“We’re all disappointed and we should’ve done better. We may be a young squad but we’ve played big games and we’ve played here many times so I still think it should’ve been possible to do better but now we have to take the lessons and move on."

Having finally found a 10-day gap in the schedule, the squad will head off to Dubai for some warm weather training and the chance to refresh and refocus ahead of the remainder of the season as we aim for glory in the Premier League and Champions League.

Martin has been on a few of these trips before and admits he has felt their benefits in recent years as we look to go again in the second half of the campaign.

Ahead of the trip, he added: “I think it will be good, it’s been a busy schedule, a lot of games and very intense, so it will definitely be good to go away and get the energy high again, come back stronger and push for the big things until the end of the season.

“Last year I think we came back so strongly afterwards. I think it’s good in the middle of the season with so much going on, so we have to go there and make sure we get a good amount of rest, work hard as well.”