Arsenal v Leeds: The Return of Henry

Hi, I’m Jon and I’ll be your occasional international correspondent on LolaSportsTalk for as long as they’ll have me.

Below is my right hand clutching Arsenal season tickets, borrowed from a family friend. Wednesday night was to be an FA Cup third round clash between the fifth placed team in what you guys for some reason call the EPL and a once-proud Leeds United team that currently languishes in “The Championship” (think Triple-A).

After about a two hour car journey, I get on the tube (aka the London Underground – or what you guys would call “the subway”). This was a potentially historic occasion, as it marked the return of Arsenal legend Thierry Henry to the club.

We pull up at the Arsenal Station. I got here early so as to avoid the rush but within an hour this station will be packed with fans.

This is the outside of the Arsenal Underground station. It’s only a five minute walk to the Emirates Stadium from here. This is probably the best spot to meet up with your friends to walk to the ground (stadium).

A row of terraced houses lines the street heading towards the stadium. On matchdays (gamedays) some of the people living in these houses tranform their front gardens into stalls of all shapes and varieties. This is one such stall selling a bunch of Arsenal stuff.

Here’s another stall, selling badges and other items, not just for Arsenal, but also for other teams as well. Some people collect these, for some reason.

For official merchandise you have to go to the Arsenal Store which was having its January Sale. As you can imagine, they are trying to cash in on the Henry return, even though he’s only here on a two month loan deal.

Another one of the terraced houses transformed for the day, this time into the Jerk Kitchen. This is why I get to the game early. I come for the free-flowing football, but I keep coming back for the curried goat.

The fans gradually begin to arrive. With it being a Wednesday evening, a lot of people come more or less straight from work, so there’s no time for tailgating or anything like that.

There’s a massive image on the side of the stadium depicting some of the greatest players to have played for the club and Ray Parlour (sorry, Ray) arm-in-arm.

This bronze statue is supposed to look like the great Tony Adams. He is possibly the greatest central defender Arsenal have ever had. Arsenal could certainly do with someone of his quality at the moment.

Henry has his own bronze statue, but I needed to get inside, so here’s another shot of the Adams one. I constantly argue with one of my friends who insists Henry is overrated because he only even plays well against the weakest teams, but you won’t find anyone here who doesn’t think Henry is worthy of his own statue.

There was an air of anticipation around the ground as in the previous few days the loan deal for Henry from came through. I was actually against the move at first, but I think that might be a by-product of my pathological hatred of Ric Flair – I’m not a fan of past-their-prime athletes returning to re-live their past glories. Admittedly, I did allow myself to get swept up in the nostalgia and excitement of this particular occasion.

The standard of my photography has slipped now, as I have had to go to my little compact camera. You can’t go getting a big camera with lens out once you’re inside, otherwise the marshalls come down and tap you on the shoulder and may ask you to leave. You may be wondering why Arsenal have opted to start a big green dinosaur on the right side of midfield, but actually that’s the mascot. He probably would have played better than Marouane Chamakh did though.

The game was very frustrating. Arsenal had all the possession and all the chances but neither team could score. With 22 minutes to go, the substitutions are made and on comes Henry – now sporting an impressive beard and wearing number 12 instead of his trademark number 14 jersey – to a hero’s welcome.

With only his 5th touch of the ball, Henry scored what would prove to be the winning goal. Earlier in the week, I told my friends that if he celebrated a goal by running round shouting “Wooo!” and ripped off his shirt to reveal a saggy chest and a set of “bingo wings”, I was never going to the Emirates again. He didn’t do any of that, but he did run around excitedly for a good couple of minutes and was noticeably gassed for the rest of the game.

I’ll admit it though, I did get caught up in the moment, as you can perhaps tell from the blurriness of the photograph. While I’m not sure scoring against the lowly Leeds does anything to disprove my friend’s theory about him only doing it against weaker opposition, we needed him to win this one and it’ll be interesting to see what else he can achieve over the next two months.

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Posted by Jon on Jan 16 2012. Filed under Photos, Soccer, Stadium Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry