Henry still on the minds of many…

October 17, 2007 | 24 Comments

It seems that many around here still have Thierry Henry on their minds. In the span of only a few hours, we received two submissions musing on the matter….

North London 11 writes:

Could it be that the departure of Henry was the best thing that could have happened to Arsenal? He is, no doubt, an amazing player capable of absolute magic, but perhaps as much as his presence helped the team it hurt it when he wasn’t there…

With him definitely gone for good, though, it almost seems like the team knows they have to push on without him, in essence doing it all themselves without their talismanic captain. Maybe his presence prevented Arsenal from ‘graduating’ beyond the idea of relying on him for key plays, games and goals. To me, I feel as though there’s far more focus now on the collective effort of Arsenal as opposed to the individual skill and brilliance of a single man. Maybe the Gunners are more in balance and more of a ‘team’ now than they have been in a few years.

I dunno. Just throwin’ that out there.

Gerry Randolph writes:

I just re-read an article on Sky Sports about Thierry Henry tipping this Arsenal team to do well this year. In the article, Henry tells of his great respect for Wenger, how much he loves the man. This is not surprising as the two men have know each other for close to 15 years now, stretching back to their Monaco days. Henry also talks about how great the youngsters have been playing this year and that could translate into the Double, League and Champions League win.

That is quite the compliment to this team, but of course if they keep playing the way they do, that could well come true. But what got me a little worried was that Henry talks about plans to come back to Emirates and say bye to the fans. I think Henry should at some point say bye, and he is right, we shouldn’t have to meet him in a competition (Champions League). I believe that Henry should get a proper sending off for all he did for the club and the fans surely still love the man.

What has me worried is that he plans to do this during the Spanish Christmas break. Now my problem with this is the Christmas period in England can be make or break for a championship winning team. Every team in the top 5 will have one bad result, a draw at home or something that can stutter their campaign. And the Arsenal teams of late have been known to go into slides, they play incredibly, but when that one bad result comes along, they seem to derail slightly. This happened a few years back with the Everton game. I am just worried that his appearance might be a little distracting (which it always was) and can cause a lot of long term damage in a time with a high volume of games. The players will undoubtedly try harder and forcing it may cause us a few problems. Why not wait until the end of the season, and then come by for a farewell?

Posted by David E | Filed Under Mailbag