Thierry Henry wants to take Emile Smith Row to Monaco on loan as the youngster continues to impress.

I first saw this mentioned on Football.London’s live blog but, as usual, they don’t link to their source (merely say ‘according to reports’ which could mean anything).

A little bit of digging and it seems the source is the Daily Star:

According to the Daily Star’s report, Henry has been monitoring Smith Rowe for a number of months and “It is understood one of the first calls Henry made on getting his first managerial job was to check on Smith-Rowe’s availability, and a January move has not been ruled out.”

It’s easy to dismiss reports from the Star, but when it comes to Arsenal they do have historically close ties and have often been first with stories, usually fed to them by Peter Hill-Wood who was close friends with their former editor.

Since Hill-Wood left the club, the number of exclusives seems to have dropped but they still get stories from time-to-time so I wouldn’t advise ruling this one out totally on the basis of it coming from the Star.