Yesterday, a smiling Henry left the pitch to backslaps and high-fives. The thigh strain that became a back injury that,miraculously, disappeared overnight had not hampered him at all. He scored a hat-trick, could have had more and re-ignited the fire that burns within the marble halls.
Victory against an initially lively yet ultimately ragged Liverpool restored Arsenal’s seven-point lead at the top of the Premiership, stretched their unbeaten league run since the start of the season to 31 matches and served notice that, no, their campaign is not about to implode. Write us off at your peril.
Out of the FA Cup and European Cup they may be, swept away by Manchester United and Chelsea respectively in the past seven days, but the biggest domestic bauble of the lot still holds its infinite fascination. Sluggish at first, Arsenal reappeared after the interval to brush aside Liverpool with a flourish. Henry was magnifique.
“We left it until this morning to decide whether Thierry would play,” Arsène Wenger, the Arsenal manager, said. “He went through a warm-up and said that he could play. And he played quite well. The biggest risk was that he was not right and would have to come off after ten minutes. But he was fantastic.”
Arsenal were less than fantastic in the first half. Had they displayed as much aggression as the seedy mass of ticket touts outside the nearby Tube station, the game might not have drifted so easily away from them. They conceded the midfield ground to Steven Gerrard and Dietmar Hamann far too readily and, consequently, trailed twice. Championship-winning fare it was not.
Defensively, they were listless, too. No concentration, no marking. When Harry Kewell slung over a corner in the fifth minute, Gerrard had the freedom of the far post to power in a stooping header that Sami Hyypia finished with the faintest of touches. Henry, hands on hips, scowled at the Arsenal bench. He was not amused.
The Liverpool fans were. “You’re going to win absolutely nothing at all,” was the gist of their chanting. And how their heroes responded to taking the lead. Emile Heskey dropped even deeper, Jerzy Dudek moved in slow motion and Gérard Houllier’s not-so-brave troops opted for holding tactics. Only 85 more minutes to see out.
Michael Owen should have increased the lead, when he raced past Sol Campbell on to John Arne Riise’s long pass, but he lobbed over the crossbar. On such moments, title challenges hinge. Seconds later, Robert Pires guided the ball through for Henry to slip it between Dudek’s legs.
Arsenal’s emotions exploded. For the first time, passion and pride spilt forth. Henry went berserk, Campbell ran half the length of the pitch to embrace him and, for ten minutes, it was the Arsenal of old. Crisis? What crisis? Then it returned: no concentration, no marking. Owen sped on toGerrard’s searching pass, comfortably escaped the clutches of Campbell and nutmegged Jens Lehmann.
At last, the “wounded animals” — Houllier’s pre-match description of Arsenal — bared their teeth. Pires guided in his seventeenth goal of the season for the equaliser. A minute later, Henry bamboozled Hamann, Jamie Carragher and Igor Biscan before lazily curling his shot past Dudek.
“He made the difference,” Houllier, the Liverpool manager, said of Henry. “And the way he scored his second goal was a piece of wonderful individual brilliance. You have to hold your hands up and praise Arsenal. Sometimes you have to admire your opponents. There is no shame in saying that they were better than us.”
Liverpool’s quest for fourth place in the Premiership and qualification for the Champions League next season took a twist for the worse. Although Gerrard battled on admirably, relishing every bone- crunching tackle with Patrick Vieira, his team-mates faded with each Arsenal thrust forward.
Twelve minutes from the end, Henry’s 34th goal of the season duly arrived. It was one of his scruffiest — Henry’s shot rebounding off Dudek, on to the forward’s hip and into the net — but he could not give a French fig. Arsenal had dragged themselves out of thedepths of despair. Henry was back, Arsenal were back. Game on again. Catch us if you can.
