When news came saying Henry would be out for a few weeks, my first reaction was - he was DROPPED.
Yes, perhaps he did has an injury, but I did not believe it’s serious enought to keep him away for a few weeks.
His form was indifferent. And he hardly seemed like trying at all on the pitch. Something had to be done. I remember DannyT once suggested Wenger would never has the nerve to drop his star man. I, too, shared Danny’s view.
But Wenger proved us wrong.
It’s not something new. Back in our 1998 double winning season, Wenger did the same with Tony Adams. Following an indifferent start of the season, with Adams bothered by a slight injury and played some awful football, Wenger sent him away to France for a few weeks. When Tony came back, he helped us to overcome a 11-point deficit to beat United to the title. And eventually he came second in the annual Player of the Year award.
Looking at the way Henry played now that he’s back, I have a strong feeling Henry’s season will finally start to take off.
Perhaps, the decision to rest Henry will prove to be a master stroke to turn our season around.
Wenger has always been labelled as a coach with no Plan B on the pitch. But if you see things from a bigger picture, this is a very resourceful manager. To rest his main man middle of a season in order to recharge him physically and mentally isn’t something every manager has the nerve to do. Yet sometimes you have to take a step back in order to move forward. This shows the FLEXIBILITY in a manager’s management skills.
When you look at Chelsea now without their captain John Terry, all a sudden they seem to be panic. The Special One starts to mourn about their injury crisis. Yes right, a team who had spent 50 millions in the summer now complaining their depth of squad.
Although our season has been inconsistent, if you look at the number of players went injuried, it’s quite unbelievable that we are still competing on all fronts.
Personally, I believe we are actually a better team now than last season. The injury problem is probably the worst in 10 years under Wenger. And at the same time we have to cope with the adjustment moving into a new stadium.
Against Man Utd, Liverpool (twice), Chelsea, Spurs, we played through all those big matches with an understrength side. Yet we came out with 4 wins and 1 draw, a signficant improvement from last season when we failed to beat anyone of them but Liverpool.
The team is not yet the finish article, but with the kids continue improving, with the first-teamers closing in to their come-back date, we are getting there day by day.
Man Utd may have a good chance to win the title this year. But if you look at their squad, they are still heavily relying in a few veterans like Giggs, Scholes, and Neville. When their legs are gone one day, they will have a more difficult time to replace them all.
As for Liverpool, as long as they keep playing Crouch and their long-ball into the box tactic, they will never be a true Premiership contender.
Cheslea, with their money, of course will always be a team to beat. But I firmly believe in a year or two, we will be the number 1 challenger of the Team Russian Sugar Daddy.
15 Responses to “Wenger, Henry and our future”
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January 8th, 2007 at 4:58 am
One virtue that Wenger has in abundance that many fans (including me) don’t is patience. He doesn’t give up easily on any one.
Look at Rosicky. He scored at Hamburg in Sep. Since then he missed many easy chances. I was getting serious doubts about his goal scoring exploits (and voiced it on the site). And then he pops up with two at the weekend. Similarly, Wenger has been patient with Baptista so far.
When Henry wasn’t doing well, the fans could see that he wasn’t playing as well as he can and that he wasn’t putting in as much effort as he did before. But Wenger was patient with him. Finally in Dec, he decided that enough is enough and rested Henry. Now we are reaping the rewards again.
In the short term, it’s easy to point out Wenger’s mistakes. But over a period of time, he more often than not comes out on top. Which is why I am hoping that 2007 will be the year we break out of our “struggle for CL spot” mode and challenge for the top.
January 8th, 2007 at 8:54 am
Henry was obviously injured AND tired … from playing an entire year straight of football.
I don’t think he was “dropped”.
He was rested. He had an injury that needed proper time to heal.
Being the captain, and being the gamer that Henry is… he wasn’t going to take time off for an injury if he could still play at 75-80% of his best. He tried to play thru it, and wasn’t effective. Wenger made the decision to make sure his best player was 100% healthy and rested.
Its paid off so far.
January 8th, 2007 at 9:20 am
“In the short term, it’s easy to point out Wenger’s mistakes. But over a period of time, he more often than not comes out on top.”
Very true indeed.
January 8th, 2007 at 11:00 am
TH does look like his former self, now the question is who de play up front with him. Do we go to 4/2/2/2 as it was Saturday or 4/5/1/or 4.4.2. If Ade is fit where does he play. Flamini is ideal off the bench, and hwne we play away side by side with Gilberto.
January 8th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
The performance and result at Liverpool demonstrates that 4-5-1 was a mistake for the majority of games that it was used. I can understand using it away to Man Utd or Chelsea or against the big teams in the Champions League, but not every single away game - it blunted the attack and the defence still couldn’t cope with or without the extra man in midfield. You can put 10 players in front of that defence and it will still make mistakes because it’s young.
Henry should be partnered by Adebayor in my opinion. Van Persie is not consistent enough and doesn’t get involved in the game as much as Adebayor and Van Persie only has a slightly better strike rate over the last 18 months since Adebayor joined.
January 8th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
You know what. We discuss a lot of stuff here and whinge about who we should buy and who we shouldnt buy. I’m never worried because I know that “Arsene does know”. The only thing that scares me is “What if Arsene goes…what if he goes before the kids are the worldbeaters they can be?”… think of it … its scary .. damn scary….
However we are slowly getting back to full strength and believe we will put in a strong run in the second half of the season. If Chelsea keep dropping a few points here n there we might be in with a decent shout for 2nd when we play them in the penultimate game at the Grove.
Yes Arsene’s tactical side has been questionable. Like all good managers though..he’s improved this year. He’s been willing to try new things and they’ve come off .. a lot of the time. And like all great managers he’s made a lot of good decisions. Resting/dropping Henry ..(I couldnt care a bit what it was as long as Titi came back refreshed) could potentially be a masterstroke.
The kids are improving all the time and can play the big games and play them well. If we can keep that streak going and keep concentrating and keep scoring goals against lesser teams it won’t matter if there’s that odd lapse in defense which costs us a goal or two or a point or 3 here n there.
Stag: No one’s blaming Henry. Why so defensive???
January 8th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
RVP vs Ade…is wonder goals vs work-ethic. You will always be tempted to keep RVP on because of his ability to turn a game with 1 brilliant strike, the same reason why you will always want to keep Titi on. AW needs to rotate, all the time because either of them are effective in their own way. The only difference is , Titi plays more in the hole when RVP is playing and its more of a 4-4-2 when Ade is playing.
The 4-5-1 is not a mistake. It seems so because we’re scoring more now but its not. If we didnt play 4-5-1 at ManU or at Chelsea we’d probably have been steamrolled. Yes we score lesser goals with a 4-5-1 but its not a defensive formation if you look at it independently. It gives Cesc, Hleb n Rosicky a lot more space and lets them all play in the same team. In the 4-4-2 Rosicky will invariably drift central just like Pires did a lot off the time leaving us with only Clichy on that wing and he might get exposed some time.
I think AW will stil use the 4-5-1 against physical teams and switch it around if we’re losing. I really dont think its a bad ploy specially if its used the way we do..not just as a stifling ploy but also with ability to gain more space and goals from midfield instead of just the front two.
January 8th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Danny, I agree with ur point of the formation. However, I believe Wenger didn’t really want to play 4-5-1. The fact that he’s been playing quite many games with 4-5-1 IMO more down to the partnership (or lack of) up front. By that I mean at the early stage of the season, be it a Henry/van Persie, Henry/Adebayor or Adebayor/van Persie partnership it failed to work effectively.
When we played 2 up front, the two strikers just simply too isolated from each other, playing their own game rather than working together.
I believe that’s why Wenger shift to 4-5-1. The purpose was not trying to defend, but to get the attacking players linking up with each other more often.
Lately it seems the 3 strikers have improved a bit of their understanding between them. At least Henry does appear to make an effort linking up with van Persie. This is an encouraging sign.
Adebayor’s work rate has won over a lot of Gooners. And I absoultely love the guy. However, I have a strong feeling van Persie will be the next big thing, our MAIN MAN up front in years to come. The boy got a massive talent. Now all he needs to do is to learn to pass. As long as he finally understands that as long as you pass the ball to Henry, he will reward you with 2 times more scoring chances with his telling passes than you try to do it all by yourself.
January 8th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
I agree with you — I don't think he was dropped — yet even here it probably took a lot of courage and foresight for Wenger to sit the guy down because of niggling injuries.
January 8th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
From now on Arsenal should only play 4-5-1 when Hleb, Rosicky and Fabregas are available. We need those three to create the triangles to make the formation the formidable weapon it can be. It can be a brilliant formation for us when those three our available. When one of them doesn’t play we do have sufficient back-up to replace them so the we should always play a 4-4-2 and make our game a bit longer and direct, and mix and match the pretty with the direct.
On Van Persie, I’m with Danny. He still flatters to deceive in my book. I predicted he would do very little on Saturday and he did exactly that. He is still too immobile and clumsy for my liking and does not possess the work rate of adebayor. It’s a bit of a u-turn from me, but I would make Adebayor first choice striker ahead of both Henry and Van Persie based purely on his work rate. We can’t afford to have two divas up-front posing for half the game and I felt we really missed Adebayor in the second half against Liverpool on Saturday. Also that moment when Van Persie failed to square for Henry in the second half showed he still has areas to work on in his game. It was a microism for all his flaws; clumsy ball control, weakness on his right side, and dithering on the ball. A quick pull back there and Henry would have tapped in.
January 8th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Nice gesture when Henry let RVP take the penalty against Charlton
January 8th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
He was dropped, Stag. All the signals point to it. The storming out of the training ground, the public show of standing by the team during the game against Spurs.
Add to that Henry’s admission that he wasn’t listening to his body. Wenger told him that he wasn’t playing. Henry wanted to play. It was only after his rest that he admitted he should not have been playing. You can say he was resting but Wenger had to drop him to make him admit he needed a rest.
January 9th, 2007 at 12:36 am
Compare that with Lampard refusing Sheva to take the penalty in the Carling Cup.
Chelsea scored six and Sheva couldn’t get one against 10-man Macclesfield.
January 9th, 2007 at 6:59 am
Van Persie is also over-reliant on his left foot, so far this had made him predictable to mark. Like Van Persie, Davor Suker was unbelievably left footed but he was an extraordinary goal poacher and played inside the box - it’s harder for Van Persie to be so reliant on one foot when most of his chances come from outside the box.
However, he has still scored goals and can improve quite a lot, which is encouraging. He is also very dangerous from set pieces.
January 9th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
good point