So here’s a topic for you all to argue about as you sit there chewing on turkey and drinking mulled wine: was Thierry Henry the greatest striker to ever grace the Premier League?
Last week the former Arsenal star announced his formal retirement from the game (realistically he had been in a state of semi-retirement ever since he left Barcelona to play in America) and that has provoked considerable debate over whether or not he was the best attacking player to ever ply his trade in England’s top flight.
If you were to judge purely on the number of goals he scored, then the answer would be no.
In the league, Henry hit the back of the net 175 times during his time at Arsenal, but Wayne Rooney is already on 179 and Alan Shearer way ahead on 260. Heck, even Andy Cole scored 12 more than Henry, although half of those were unintentional while the other half came off his thigh.
However, simple statistics like that are hugely misleading. Shearer played in the top flight for nearly two decades while Henry was only at Arsenal for eight years. On that basis you would have to say that Henry’s total is more impressive than Shearer’s. In fact, in a goals-per-game ratio, Henry is miles ahead of all the other strikers who have scored more than 100 Premier League goals.
More than that, however, when trying to decide who is the best ever striker, you need to look at the bigger picture. How much did the player contribute to his team, what success did he achieve, did he do the business on the biggest stage, were his goals crucial or merely the icing on the cake of comfortable wins, were they all tap-ins or did he create them himself?
And when you start to ask those sort of questions, you begin to realise that Henry was a bit more special than his rivals.
It would be entirely wrong to suggest the former Juventus and Monaco player single-handedly won trophies for Arsenal because he obviously didn’t. He was surrounded by quality players.
However, you can’t ignore the fact that with Henry in the side, Arsenal had a quite remarkable 61 per cent win ratio. Just as you can’t ignore the fact that to this day he still holds the record number of assists in a single season (23). And that he was the club’s top scorer in nearly every season he spent in London.
And all that is before you touch on the subject of the quality of his goals. Some of them, even more than a decade later, are things of true beauty. There were one or two on the clip I just watched that almost made me tear up.
So far, then, it would seem to be an open and shut case: Henry for King.
But there is one counter-argument I would like to propose before we call Henry and invite him over for his official crowning. Was a large slice of Henry’s brilliance down to the players around him?
How effective would the likes of Shearer and even (as much as this hurts) Cole have been if they had played in that particular Arsenal team? Would Henry have been as prolific and spectacular if he wasn’t playing in the same team as Dennis Bergkamp, Marc Overmars, Patrick Viera and Robert Pirès, to name but a few? His record at New York Red Bulls suggests he might.
When trying to decide who is the best ever striker, you need to look at the bigger picture
But then again, while the quality of his team mates might not have been great in America, neither was the quality of his opponents.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why it is absolutely impossible to come to any sort of definitive conclusion on a topic as subjective as this. How on earth can you even define what constitutes the best, let alone decide who deserves the title?
Ultimately, Henry was a magnificent player who was a pleasure to watch in the Premier League and who rightly deserves to go down in history as one of the greatest strikers to ever grace the English game.
But the best of all time? Impossible to say.
The award you don’t want to win
Yes I know. The jinx strikes again. You don’t need to tell me.
Last week I wrote about how well Newcastle are doing and Arsenal went and beat them 4-1 just hours before the column came out. The Toon then follow that up with a 4-0 defeat at Tottenham Hotspur in the Capital One Cup.
But in my defence I don’t think this mini-slump was entirely my fault: last Saturday, just hours before the clash at The Emirates, Newcastle boss Alan Pardew won the Premier League’s Manager of the Month award for November.
And we all know if there is one thing guaranteed to throw a spanner in the works it is winning that particular award. It’s football’s equivalent of the kiss of death.
In fact, if Pardew had won it again in December (which is now nigh on impossible) you could pretty much rest assured he would have been looking for a new job in the new year. That’s just how the MOTM curse works.
It’s even more powerful than mine…
Three and easy
It was a pretty decent draw for the English teams in the last 16 of the Champions League. Arsenal can’t have too many complaints about their opponents. True, there is the added spice of Monaco being the club where Arsene Wenger made his name but the French club only scored four goals in their six group games. Even Arsenal’s creaky defence should be able to cope with an attack best described as powder puff.
Ironically, in Arsenal’s case, finishing second actually paid off – if they had won the group they would have faced the considerably trickier task of getting past Juventus. Maybe Wenger’s luck is changing.
Chelsea, meanwhile, should have no problems overcoming Paris Saint-Germain.
It may be a repeat of last year’s clash when the London club needed the away goals rule to get through, but much has changed in the past 12 months.
José Mourinho’s team have improved dramatically, adding depth and quality across the squad, while Laurent Blanc’s boys are struggling in a manner totally unbefitting a team with a bottomless bank account.
In fact, the only English team that is likely to struggle to make the quarter-finals is Manchester City. Unlike Arsenal, they paid dearly for finishing runners-up by drawing Barcelona.
It is not an unwinnable tie, especially if City continue to show the resilience they have been displaying in the past few weeks. And Sergio Aguero should be back by the time the matches take place.
But getting past a Barcelona team that boasts an attacking trio of Neymar, Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez is a big ask for any club, let alone one that is still finding its feet in Europe.
My prediction: Arsenal and Chelsea to cruise into the quarters and City to narrowly miss out.
A game of two managers?
What is it about Nigel Clough and cup competitions?
He has only been manager of Sheffield United for 16 months but during that time he has taken charge of no less than 18 cup matches. Even more astonishing is that he has only lost two of them.
His latest win came on Tuesday night when the League One side deservedly knocked Premiership Southampton out of the Capital One Cup and secured a place in the semi-finals.
The strange thing about this is that the team’s performances in the cups are generally excellent but that form is not really translating to the league. It’s almost as if he knows how to pick and motivate a team for a cup match but struggles when it comes to the routine of league football.
And that gave me a bit of an idea: why not put two managers in charge of a team? One dedicated to the league and another specialising in the cups.
Of course, that’s probably not financially feasible at league one level, but who’s to say a top-level club might not give it a whirl at some point in the future? They already have specialists for every other aspect of football, so why not specialist managers?
It might get a bit complicated when it comes to European competition, as that mixes league and knock-out formats, but I’m sure it could be worked around. Maybe with a third boss.
Anyway, just something for you to mull over when you’re bored of the Henry debate.
Have a great Christmas!
sportscolumnist@timesofmalta.com
Twitter: @maltablade