Thierry Henry wants to be Arsenal manager. Of that there is absolutely no doubt.

Not only has he said it repeatedly, while also mouthing platitudes at the same time about not disrespecting the current manager, he has his pals at Sky Sports pushing that agenda too when they’d be better off doing a Video Slots Review. 

His latest comments have him claiming that if Arsenal asked for his help he would, of course, have to say yes. 

Except that’s not really true, is it? 

“Listen, I’m a competitor, you don’t back down from a challenge,” Henry said.

“We are hypothetically speaking before people jump ahead of everything, [but] I have never backed down from a challenge since I was young.

If you love a place and they ask — I repeat, they ask — for help, you are always going to say yes

“If I had listened to people who were talking about where I was going to be, I would not have been here.

“When I arrived at Arsenal, they said to me, ‘Why are you outside of the box, you will never score goals?’ with my position being on the left or whatever it was. You don’t back down from a challenge, you always think that you can.

“When I came back to play for Arsenal, everybody, all my friends were saying, ‘It can only tarnish your legacy, why are you going back there?’

“If you love a place and they ask — I repeat, they ask — for help, you are always going to say yes. What I am saying to you is again, we are talking about hypothetical thoughts.”

Arsenal not only asked Henry to return but offered him a coaching position.

A private club, as Henry should know, they had one stipulation – that he give up his role as a pundit on Sky Sports that often saw him have to criticise the very club he would be working for and the players he would be interacting with on a regular basis. 

He refused. 

Henry then took up an assistant role with the Belgian national team. Not a club side, but a national one that meets far less frequently and comes with much more free time for, well, punditing, I guess. 

When I told my teachers in school I wanted to be a journalist, they told me it was too hard an industry to get into and to choose something else. I opted to leave school instead and bum around in dead-end admin jobs for a few years. Then I decided I was going to go for it.

I spotted an ad from a magazine looking for a sales person, figured they might need some other staff, phoned them up and sold myself. I told them I had no professional writing experience but plenty of admin knowledge and was happy to be the general office dogsbody for half the pay I was currently earning (ie £80 a week) if the editor would give me a chance to write.

It didn’t matter that I knew nothing about architecture and it was an architectural magazine. I wanted to write and I wanted guidance from someone who knew the industry and I was willing to make sacrifices, in terms of both time and money, to make that happen. 

Henry claims he wants to be Arsenal manager, but what is he doing to show he deserves the role or even that he is desperate to get it?

He seems to believe that because he was a playing legend that gives him some sort of right to the position, but it doesn’t work like that.

Although in the same industry, they are different jobs requiring different training, experience and skillsets.  

The world’s best GP can’t become a surgeon just because she fancies a go at the job. She has to undergo further training, gain valuable experience under the guidance of those who have been doing it for years, and show some sort of desire to be good at the job. 

Henry may well go on to be a world-class manager, but there is not one single thing you could point to at present that says he will with certainty.  

He could win everything, play the best football in the world and become the greatest coach the game has ever seen but, unfortunately, the reality is he is most likely to be rubbish over any length of time. 

Appointing Henry to the manager’s job after Arsene Wenger finally lets go, something Josh Kroenke is said to be keen on, would be the move of a football club that is run by people who don’t know the game and are only concerned with image. 

I also get the sense that for Henry this is less about the club than it is about his own ego. 

If the board opt to take a chance on him, it proves we are in a lot more trouble than we already think.