Henry should win the Ballon D’Or 27 November, 2006

Well it would be nice wouldn’t it?

I want to put that defeat to Bolton behind us and carry on with the season, I don’t care if we don’t win the title, I just want us to have a good season and qualify for the Champions League and hopefully go far in the competition this year too. The beginning of nice things and good luck for Arsenal would be Thierry Henry picking up the European Player of The Year Award today. I’m not sure when it is announced officially who’s won but reports are that world cup winner Cannavaro will be taking 2006′s Ballon D’Or home. However many people have said that Thierry Henry deserves the prize this year round, and now France’s coach Raymond Domenech has been added to that list. I think he should win it too, and I’m not just saying that as a Gooner. Here’s what the two have done in the past year:

Fabio Cannavaro

1. Captained Italian side that won The World Cup
2. Cheated with Juve and had 2 titles taken away and relegated to Serie B
3. Left Juve for Madrid because didn’t want to help club back to the top

Thierry Henry

1. Became captain of Arsenal FC
2. Reached The World Cup final with France and was top goal scorer
3. Reached Champions League final
4. Became Arsenal’s all time record goal scorer
5. Chose Arsenal over Barca, declaring his love for the club

I think that’s it but you can see all Cannavaro has done is one thing, and fair enough it is a big thin but Henry was in that final too but only lost on penalties. It seems as though Cannavaro’s name is being engraved onto that trophy but I think along with many others the Frenchman should be lifting the trophy today.

Thierry Henry picked up his third yellow card in the Champions League against Hamburg last week which now rules him out of Arsenal’s vital game against Porto. His 1st yellow card was a stupid one in Moscow, it was when we had that last minute goal not given after Henry apparently handballed it and picked up a booking for it. It was absolutely ludicrous and now thanks to that we will be without our star player for the decisive group game. Thierry has been saying how he should’ve steered clear of any bookable offences against Hamburg:

“I concede that the booking I picked up wasn’t very clever. It was the result of frustration, but I’m not making excuses – I deserved the yellow card. And of course I am disappointed to be out of the Porto game. “The two yellow cards I picked up against CSKA were not bookings and in fact the first card, well, not only did the ref rule out a perfectly good goal, he booked me for handball! What can you do? Sometimes these things happen in football and I just had to accept the suspension. We showed great character to come back and win against Hamburg which leaves us in a good position to qualify.”

All we need is a point in Portugal and I think we can do it without Henry. We should have Van Persie for the game and William Gallas has targeted this game for his comeback. It’s all very exiting but it will be very tense. I think the Champions League should be our main focus now so not qualifying is unacceptable.

Lets take one game at a time though and the next one is Fulham away in two days time. I will be there giving my support with the away Gooners. Henry and Van Persie will be back for this one after being unavailable last weekend, a win is a must and anything other than that is just not good enough. Fulham have lost their last two games and are not having the best of seasons and need points at the moment so they won’t go down without a fight. I think we need to play the 4-4-2 for this game, the 5-man midfield shows too much respect to teams and what we need at the moment is goals and a man supporting Henry. I think Wenger will probably start 4-5-1 but I hope he realises we will do better with two up top. Mourinho says Arsenal are not out of the title race just yet, we are 33/1 top become champions. As long as we are up near the top challenging the top teams that’s good enough for me. Fulham should be an easy three points but we’ll just have to see how much luck we have on the day. (Also Spurs are 400/1 to win the league)

That your lot for today. Wish a happy birthday to this bloke and I hope we’ll be celebrating Thierry wining the Ballon D’Or tomorrow. Have a good day.

UPDATE: Henry comes 3rd in Ballon D’Or.