Arsenal without Henry

So it's official. Henry has left and the club has to move forward. I always believed he was going to leave when he said "Right now, I am an Arsenal player". That was the first time he didn't wholly commit his future to the club when speculation came that he was leaving the club. I have no problem with him going. He is a great player and has been great for the club but if he's not happy here, well, he should be allowed to leave. But I have a problem with the amount he left for.

£16 million pounds is way too small for Henry. I don't care if he wanted to go there and that was the only team he wanted to play for. They should have held out for more. And Henry himself should have made it his responsibility that we got what we deserved for him. That should have been his last act as Arsenal captain. In his letters in The Sun and Arsenal.com, he explained his reasons for leaving. Not about to go into them. If you haven't read them, go and read them.

One key thing that came out of this situation is that we really miss David Dein. We need to find a way to bring him back now that the Arsenal board seem to like Kroenke. Wenger seems hell bent on leaving now and might even have sold Henry to himself at Barcelona. We'll see about that in due time. So, we need to bring David Dein back and put him on the board with Stan Kroenke to move the club forward possibly even phasing out Hillwood, Fiszman and the rest of the Board. They have taken the club as far as they can and we need to move forward.

Moving on, we need to buy another striker who will obviously be compared to him. Wenger should continue in his tradition and give the #14 jersey to someone in a different position. Maybe a goalkeeper or something ridiculous. Anyway, Arsenal News Blog has a list of possible replacements. I like Anelka. He's familiar with the English game, will score goals and would suit the way we currently play. However, I think Wenger has an unwritten rule of not buying former players that we have sold. Let's just wait and see.

Good luck to Henry in Barrcelona. Here's to the future of Arsenal.

PS: How come we didn't get Eto'o in exchange for Henry? What happened to Eto'o plus £17 million for Henry?