You Must Be Mad, Martin

According to Martin Samuel, writing in the News of the World, Thierry Henry “must be mad” to announce that he is staying at Arsenal.

Why? Because he is “turning his back on Ronaldinho” and “the world’s most beautiful football team” who are “playing football like Arsenal used to”.

“used to”. That past tense is interesting. Evidently Martin seems to think that Arsenal’s beautiful football is all history, especially now that the sublime Denis Bergkamp is “in the twilight of his career” and Robert Pires (apparently) is “fading”.

But surely we’ve heard that sort of thing before. Years ago - when Anelka, Overmars and Petit left. The days of gloom and doom and prophecies of disaster.

So what actually happened? Henry, Pires, Gilberto and Edu arrived. More trophies. Irresistible football. And for an entire season, an invincible team.

Some disaster. Unless of course you happened to be Anelka, Overmars or Petit.

What it all amounts to is this. Thierry Henry’s announcement demonstrates how much he loves and understands Arsenal and how much he trusts his manager. And at a time when there are far too many football mercenaries, it is important that his refreshing loyalty should be applauded and his intelligent judgement respected.

As for Martin Samuel, he is undoubtedly one of the finest, most admired and most entertaining sports journalists in the country. Which makes his decision to question both Thierry Henry’s sanity and Arsene Wenger’s ability in this uncharacteristically loose piece all the more extraordinary.

And a temporary aberration from which he will almost certainly quickly recover.