Henry – ‘Injuries Cost Us Dear’

Arsenal skipper Thierry Henry has spoken of how he felt the season could and should have gone very differently for the Red Army.

The Gunners’ squad, shorn of its’ brightest goalscoring talents, and prevented, for a 2nd season running, of fielding a settled side due to injuries, endured a season that heartened and frustrated in equal measure.

Titi spoke thus:

‘Getting everybody injured in the same position does not help,’ he told Arsenal TV.

‘No disrespect to the defenders, but you can always try to do something at the back – but to teach somebody to score some goals over a couple of weeks, it does not happen like that.

‘That was difficult, even though Emmanuel Adebayor did a great job. It would have been better if we were all around, to try to alternate and keep even more pressure on teams.

‘Manu comes out, I come on, or Robin, or I come out and he comes on, or whatever.

‘Before we all went out injured, we were doing that and we were on a Hell of a run.

Henry continued: ‘It was unlucky. A lot of teams had to suffer that during the season, but especially here it is maybe not the same when you miss some key players.

‘We have a young squad and we missed at the important time of the season key, experienced players.

‘No disrespect to anybody else, but you cannot afford to miss them. For those guys to be around in the dressing room, to be around at training, you need everybody in. We did miss that.

‘It is not an excuse at the end of the day, because even when we were missing some key players we still managed to have some great results.

‘But the consistency was not there and you need to have everybody around to have that, to keep the every single player on their toes, to feel the pressure there is somebody who can take your position.

‘That was not there, so that did not help during the season.’

Speaking of his own personal injury-plagued campaign, Henry said:

‘It has been a difficult season for me in terms of injuries.

‘It was the first time it had happened to me, and it was kind of awkward.

‘I feel like the season did not start for me really, so hopefully I can have a proper one next season.’

Henry added: ‘I kind of knew this season was going to be difficult because I felt tired from the start.

‘I have never been really injured like that before.

‘When you have something which lasts the whole season it is annoying.

‘Before the Eindhoven game, I had not trained for two weeks.

‘I just went out there to try to help the team.

‘Maybe it was not something clever to do, I agree with that.

‘But I have the feeling it was always going to happen, because I had never been right since the beginning of the season.

‘My body was sending me signals that I did ignore and I was just not right.’

Gooners everywhere will be looking forward to having everyone fighting fit and raring to go in the new season, as we look to mount an all-out assault on all fronts…