Thierry Henry wants to leave Barcelona! (Allegedly)

My all-time favourite football player, and one of the greatest former Arsenal players ever, Thierry Henry, reportedly wants to leave Barcelona (for whom he left Arsenal last year - see my previous post about that here) and come back to play in the English Premier League, preferably based in London.

See this article in today's News of the World tabloid Sunday newspaper for full details of the story.

If Thierry really is going to leave Barcelona, it's clearly going to be too much to hope that he will return to Arsenal given the views of the club manager (Arsene Wenger) on the subject, which just makes me even sadder now after the initial sadness of seeing him leave the club in the first place. I have been an Arsenal fan virtually all my life, and a fan of Arsene Wenger since his arrival 11 and a half years ago, but since last year I have become increasingly of the opinion that Wenger should quit!

A controversial opinion perhaps, but I feel that despite his previous great success at the club he has seriously lost the plot now. He has failed to win any trophies for the past three seasons (including the current almost complete season - Arsenal are, realistically speaking, out of the race for the Premier League title now despite winning yesterday), he increasingly blames poor refereeing decisions for causing defeats (see here for a recent example) rather than accepting that his own tactical errors are actually to blame, he has an apparent almost pathological non-English player bias (see here for details) which is quite embarassing to me at least (being, as I am, English, and with Arsenal being an English club), he still insists on selecting Philip Senderos who is without doubt the worst defender ever to play for the Arsenal first team (although he was only a substitute yesterday, thank goodness), and he let Thierry Henry leave only to possibly now let him return to a rival Premier League club. Good grief!

Note: I will of course fully retract the above satatement if Thierry does return to Arsenal and/or Wenger wins at least the "Double" next season if, as I suspect will be the case, he doesn't quit. Lol! :-)

Thierry Henry is leaving Arsenal Football Club!

Having been a fan of Arsenal for over 30 years, it came as a great surprise to me to learn yesterday of the sudden decision to allow the club's captain and greatest ever goal-scorer, Thierry Henry, to leave so that he can join arch-European rivals Barcelona. The main reason this news surprised me was that only last year Thierry pledged the rest of his career to Arsenal. An interesting new definition of the word "pledge", that's for sure.

It's particularly sad news for me (and all other Arsenal fans I'm sure), because Thierry has truly graced the sport here in England with his amazing footballing skills and gentlemanly conduct for eight seasons now. He has been a joy to watch, and is one of the greatest players ever, of that there can be no doubt. I am so sorry to see him go. I would just like to say a huge thank you to Thierry for all the wonderful memories he has left me with. I wish him and his family all the very best with the new venture.

I hope the Arsenal manager, Arsene Wenger, knows what he is doing. It seems to me to be a very risky decision to let Thierry leave. But I'll keep faith with the boss, for now anyway...