Henry’s controversial interview + Cesc, van Persie & Vermaelen news 23 March, 2010

On Friday Arsenal were drawn with Barcelona in the next round of the Champions League and it’s set to be one of the most exciting ties of the year. The two sides are widely regarded as the two most entertaining football sides in the world but only one will progress to the semi finals. There are strong player connections between the two sides with Cesc Fabregas leaving Barcelona as a youngster and constantly linked back to his boyhood club and Thierry Henry who left Arsenal in 2007 to join the Spanish champions. Well the former Arsenal captain has had his say on the game and unsurprisingly he feels a bit divided:

“Whenever there is a draw for the Champions League I’m in pain. I’m not saying I won’t try to fight or whatever because that’s the way the game is. But I don’t want to play against Arsenal.

It will be weird for me to step on the pitch, even if it’s at the Emirates and not Highbury, with another shirt on.”

He was also asked whether he would celebrate a goal if he scored against us to which he replied:

“Forget about it! No. I said to you when it’s the draw I am in pain. I do not want to play against Arsenal, simple as that.

The bond that I have with the Arsenal fans I will never get anywhere else. Because I don’t think I will ever play for another team for that long.”

You’d expect Titi to show some degree of love towards Arsenal in the build up to this game but I did not expect him to come straight out and say he doesn’t want to play against us. You can see the video of the interview here. I can understand that when the draw is done he hopes that Barca doesn’t get Arsenal and I wouldn’t expect him to celebrate if he scored for his new team either but I feel like his comments are a bit too strong. Obviously it’s kind of nice for us to hear but imagine if one of our players did something similar; say we drew Zenit Saint Petersburg and Andrei Arshavin came out with similar comments. I don’t think it would go down too well with the Arsenal fans. It’s not as if this is the first time Henry has spoken about Arsenal either, I don’t know how Barca fans feel about him but I’d imagine they aren’t over the moon.

I worry for him that this might cost him his place in the side. He says he doesn’t want to play against us anyway, but whether that’s literal or not I don’t know. However he might’ve helped Pep Guardiola’s decision already. He’s a professional and I wouldn’t expect anything other than him to give 100% for Barca if he gets on the pitch but he might not even get that chance. It’d be great to see him back at Arsenal and I’m sure he’ll get a great reception whether he plays or not.

You can compare his interview with Cesc’s who has shown no such loyalty to his former club:

“If you want to win this competition, you have to beat everyone who is coming. If we had been drawn against Bordeaux or Lyon we would have taken it the same way. Barcelona is a great team, but we always go with the same mentality and that is to win.

We are going to play against the best team in Europe, probably in the world. The boys are really looking forward to it as it is another opportunity to play against a great team in a great stadium. It will be very exciting.

At the moment we have won nothing. We are not thinking about being champions. We are only thinking about Birmingham next week. There is a lot of time to think about Barcelona. Our first priority is Birmingham and that it is the sign of champions, taking things game by game.”

So professional, such a legend. I have no doubts that he will give absolutely everything against Barcelona and if he scores I have no doubts about him going absolutely mental. He’s right though – our next game is Birmingham not Barcelona so we need to concentrate on that first.

We will be without Thomas Vermaelen for the trip to St Andrews after the red card he received on Saturday. We did try to appeal the decision but it was turned down. I was surprised to hear yesterday that we tried to get it lifted, it was a soft card but I thought the risk of a ban extension for a ‘frivolous appeal’ would put us off. We went for it anyway and thankfully the FA considered it a legitimate appeal and kept the ban at just one game.

It means we have just Campbell, Silvestre and Song to choose from this weekend and I think it will be the latter two. Sol will be preferred to start against Barca and there’s no way he can give two top performances in such a short space of time. I think we’ll face Birmingham with Song and Silvestre at the back and save a fully fit Vermaelen and Campbell partnership for next Wednesday night.

Finally today there’s an update on Robin van Persie who is back in training but said to be at least a month away. That means he could play our last two or three league games and in the latter stages of the Champions league if we get past Barcelona. However even then he will be lacking match experience. We can’t rely on him for the rest of this season I’m afraid, we can just treat him as an added bonus for our final few games.

That’s it for today. More later this week as I try to forget about Barcelona and think about the tough trip to Birmingham. Thanks for reading.