Thierry Henry to Barcelona
There are things we love talking about, but believe they will never happen. One such is the news that Thierry Henry will be unveiled as a Barcelona player in the coming days. Probably because the press has been talking about this for the past few years, this - the first real “shock-and-awe” move of this summer - doesn’t come as a major surprise. An air of told-you-so shrouds Henry’s departure from Arsenal.
I’m no fan of Henry. But the unwritten rule in sport is that if the opposition fans boo you, it means you are doing something right. Henry was / is a classy striker, someone you never want to see on the opposing team sheet.
A deadly mix of precision, guile, movement and positioning, he was around whom the Arsenal system was built. And that is the fear every Arsenal fan now will feel. Is the system good enough without its captsone? Indications are that it might not be. Arsenal’s form has revolved around Henry’s. Moreover, the present team is still a work in progress, and it needs the stability that a big-name player can provide.
In just the past two years, the team has lost a core of players - Robert Pires, Denis Bergkamp, Patrick Vieira, Ashley Cole, Sol Campbell. And except for Fabregas who has stepped in and fit snugly into Vieira’s shoes, the replacements for the others (Rosicky, Hleb, Adebayor, Senderos, Flamini) are yet to rise and shine. The news from Ashburton Grove over the next few weeks is sure to keep everyone interested.
But don’t count the Gunners out yet. After all, Manchester United won the Premiership this season despite the loss of their top striker, Ruud van Nistelrooy (a striker, not as gifted as, but just as deadly as Henry). A top club only needs a couple of young players to step up and take control.
On the other hand
If anyone thinks that Barca have pulled off a major coup by signing Henry, that would be a mistake. The Catalans already have a top-draw forward line - Ronaldinho, Eto’o and Messi, the REM trio as they are known. Since Eto’o and Henry play a similar style, Henry would not directly fit into a 4-3-3. And since you don’t pay 16 million pounds to put a world-class striker on the bench, Rijkaard will have to work a system to fit Henry in. As one Spanish paper put it, such a system will definitely be unnatural.
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Filed under: Football
Vijay, I think Eto is probably going to leave Barca, since it makes no sense for him to stay given his problems with Barca over the past year. I think Barca doesn’t really need henry because as you said Messi is really starting to make a mark for them and then they have several good strikers in the bench like saviola.
Arsenal has a team with lot of potential provided they stay fit. Van Persie is getting injured far to often and when he plays he shows what a good striker he can be. Abedeyor is really good as well but he needs more experience. Arsenal needs better defenders though. Gallas is the only one who can be called reliable. The rest are very ordinary. They also need Fabregas to stay, because he can be really a world class player in the future.
A barcelona move was always on the cards da. He is too good a player to remain idle when other counterparts are vyiing for european glory. So he made a wise move. Now the question as you have put, where does he fit? Remember he was not in the scheme of things in Juventus. As he said once, ‘Juve failed to utilise me. I was just a winger not at all part of the core attack’. He likes to remain active always. So Rijkaard has a tough job deciding where to put him since he also has so many class players around.
Arsenal are going to struggle without him. They need to sign some good players and need to be persistent with their young team. With Wenger also going out, future remains bleak