So the rumours are true – Henry’s a Barcelona player

So Thierry Henry has left the building – it’s now official, having passed his medical, Henry is now a Barcelona player for a fee said to be 24 million euros, or £16.1M. After losing Henry there’s a lot to ponder, too much for me to possibly cover in the detail I’d like with but one post. And so all I’ll do here is pay tribute to a club legend and wish him all the very best in this new chapter of his career. Other matters such as whether £16M was enough, who will take the captaincy and perhaps most importantly, who will replace Henry, will be covered in due course, but not today.

Now I don’t know about you, but personally, I don’t feel an ounce of bitterness toward Henry. I couldn’t possibly. He’s given us eight years of fantastic service and has more than repaid any debt that he owed us and Arsene Wenger. Irrelevant of whether Dein left or not, I think Henry wanted a new challenge and Barcelona is a club where he has more chance of silverware in the short term. We’re a club in transition, boasting a mostly new (Gilberto, Kolo and Ljungberg the remaining exceptions) generation of playing talent and while this is one of the most promising squads in football and we are on the up, for the past two seasons we’ve finished fourth, albeit with a champion’s league final appearance thrown in between. While the future looks promising, I‘m pretty sure he wants to win things now as well as adding a Champion’s League winner’s medal to the trophy cabinet. I don’t blame him for this and I don’t blame him for leaving despite saying last summer that he’d finish his career here. He obviously thought that he made the wrong decision in the end.

Henry was a fantastic player, a brilliant player, one in a million. He’ll go down in history as one of Arsenal’s greatest players, a real legend, and note, I’m not one to use the term ‘legend’ lightly. He’ll also go down in Premiership history as one of the greatest and would make a real claim at being the Premiership’s best so far. Watching him has been nothing short of a pleasure. A true masterstroke of a signing by Le Boss and one whom I hope will continue to do well in his new surroundings though it would be nice if he saved any off days for us.

• This article made me laugh. It suggests Wenger is certainly not a great manager. I feel like writing a full length response to tackle the points made but I won’t, it doesn’t deserve that much, no, I’ll just laugh.
• We’re linked with Alberto Aquilani, who’s said to have impressed for Italy in the Under 21 Championship. I saw him against England and he didn’t look bad. I do believe he’s a central midfielder though and we’re in no dire need of extra central midfielders.
• Saying that, we’ve been linked with Sakari Bagna pretty heavily of late, a right back, and it’s not exactly an area of the squad that requires dire strengthening. Both Justin Hoyte and Eboue were signed to long term contracts quite recently.
• There’s talk that the board will block a bid for Nicholas Anelka, which is rather ridiculous. The board have always let Wenger get on so why they would that change now?
• Wenger has also told the board he’ll sign a new contract providing they reinstate David Dein. Again, highly unlikely.