Our greatest ever and the Va va voom The thing about Thierry Henry is, for us Arsenal fans, is that he is probably the only player ever to play for us that could have been regarded as the best footballer in the world in his prime, in our lifetimes. The 1930’s legends were well before modern times and we have no way to determine how good they were. But huge numbers of us have seen Henry play live, either in person or on TV. We have seen the great goals, the trophies carried home, the incredible French team among the greatest World Cup winners, the mesmerizing interplay between him and Bergkamp and also Pires. We watched, and saw majesty. And we allowed that majesty to rub off on us. We were Thierry Henry and we were Arsenal. Va va voom. The majesty of the King August the 17th is coming right up. He will be 48. He last played for us in 2012, seven games in which he scored twice. He was slower, and not the terror that haunted opposing centre-halves but he was back and it proved that Arsenal was his true home. His best days were at Arsenal and we all know that. We helped make him the best centre-forward in England and the world, feared by defenders, not because of his physicality but his ability to make them look incompetent. Although he probably did score some scruffy goals, I can only remember him scoring worldies all the time. I would look, and my mouth would drop open – how did he score that? If any of you are too young, just check out all his goals for Arsenal, along with Dennis Bergkamp, so many goals were pure magic. The most famous number 14? He is our top scorer, our sublime number 14, and it is credit to his prowess that his inspiration for that number, the unbelievable Johan Cruyff, is possibly not renowned as the most famous wearer of that shirt. The extraordinary Federer, the unsurmountable Tiger, and the King of football When Gillette wanted a football figurehead for their massive ad campaign “The Best a Man Can Get” they chose Roger Federer in tennis, Tiger Woods in golf and our birthday boy in football. This is the company he kept. This is the boy who still regularly tops polls as the greatest Premier League player and he is ours. He will always be our greatest? It is hard to believe that anyone will overtake him as our greatest player. Nobody truly stands out among the current squad mostly, I believe, because no-one consistently scores goals these past few seasons. Everyone scores a few, no-one scores a lot. Will Gyokeres overtake him? I doubt it although I would love it if he overtook Ian Wright, who is a much more direct comparison as he was also 27 when he came from Crystal Palace. If he could do that, us Arsenal fans would be so happy as we might finally get some big trophies. Yes, we know, Thierry But back to Henry, he was with us for 8 years if you disregard the short loan spell in 2012. He scored 228 goals for us and I suspect that record will stand uncorrected. But it wasn’t that record that made him stand out but the sheer quality of his goals and the feeling that you were watching greatness. Wayne Rooney, by contrast, scored 253 goals for Manchester United as their record holder but is not held in anywhere near the same esteem as other Man Utd legends. Thierry is our greatest and the reason so many chose Arsenal to be their team. Only keepers can handle the ball? Of course, in Ireland he is a controversial figure with his handling of the ball in the run-up to the decisive goal when France beat Ireland in extra time in a play-off for the 2010 World cup finals. All sorts of people got involved including Sepp Blatter but nothing was ever done. In football, cheating gets rewarded and, I suspect if Robbie Keane had done the same to France, Irish fans would not have complained. I await the day when football finally bans cheating. I never touched it, ref! In fairness to Henry, he was never regarded as a cheat and he did say, in the aftermath, that the fairest thing is to replay the match. That was never going to happen. He gave us Va va voom and we still have it What he did do, though, was to give us our greatest days, the thrill, whenever he got on the ball that he might do something incredible. The double, the Invincibles, winning trophies at rivals grounds, but above all else, the sublime goals that seem a true rarity in modern football. Arsene Wenger allowed him to flourish, to play football, to express himself that may have been knocked out of him by todays coaches who want to control players in where they should be, who to pass to, and what chances to take. For Arsenal it was simple, give the Frenchman the ball, he knows what he is doing. I suspect, without Wenger, it is possible that those glory days might have passed Thierry and us by. He was struggling at Juventus. Our greatest manager and our greatest player And so we inherited the Va va voom, the advertising cliché for the Renault Clio which got entered into the Oxford dictionary after our birthday boy spun it around Paris but was also what we felt watching Thierry juggle and spin the ball past hapless opponents as another sublime goal was scored. Only us at Arsenal had that Va va voom and we loved it! Happy birthday, young man, you were our greatest and we love you for it.