Former Arsenal striker Thierry Henry is one of the two front-runners to take over as a manager at AFC Bournemouth, according to a report.

MONACO - DECEMBER 11: Thierry Henry, Manager of Monaco looks on prior to the UEFA Champions League Group A match between AS Monaco and Borussia Dortmund at Stade Louis II on December 11, 2018 in Monaco, Monaco. (Photo by Alexander Hassenstein/Bongarts/Getty Images)
MONACO: Thierry Henry, Manager of Monaco looks on prior to the UEFA Champions League Group A match on December 11, 2018. (Photo by Alexander Hassenstein/Bongarts/Getty Images)

The Mirror report that Thierry Henry is alongside former Huddersfield boss David Wagner as the front-runner to take over from Jason Tindall at AFC Bournemouth. The club’s hierarchy are huge fans and see him as the man to turn them around.

The board are now planning an approach to Henry’s current club, CF Montreal. Bournemouth currently sit sixth in the Championship table and are aiming for promotion this season.

Henry’s spell in management so far hasn’t gone particularly well. He left AS Monaco after 20 games with a 20% win rate, and he’s currently only at 31% with CF Montreal after 29 games.

His team finished the last MLS season in ninth place of the 14 teams in the Eastern Conference, 18th out of 26 overall.

Yet you can’t really know how much of that is coaching and how much is the team he was left with. Montreal finished in exactly the same positions (ninth in the Eastern Conference, 18th overall) the previous season. Perhaps that’s just their level.

If the Bournemouth hierarchy believe Henry can offer more than the results suggest, it would be very interesting to see how he does managing in the English second-tier.

Thierry Henry turned TV off when Granit Xhaka captained Arsenal says Patrice Evra

by Lee Hurley

Referee Graham Scott shows the red card to send off Arsenal's Swiss midfielder Granit Xhaka (R) during the English Premier League football match between Arsenal and Burnley at the Emirates Stadium in London on December 13, 2020. (Photo by Laurence Griffiths / POOL / AFP)
Referee Graham Scott shows the red card to send off Arsenal’s Swiss midfielder Granit Xhaka (R) during the English Premier League football match between Arsenal and Burnley at the Emirates Stadium in London on December 13, 2020. (Photo by Laurence Griffiths / POOL / AFP)

Speaking on Sky Sports after Arsenal’s debacle that saw them lose at home to Burnley in December, Patrice Evra regaled viewers with a story about Thierry Henry and Granit Xhaka.

Granit Xhaka was linked with a move away that week and, with his hand reaching around the neck of a Burnley player, he might well have been considering that to be the final nail in his Arsenal coffin.

Whatever was, or more likely wasn’t, going through Xhaka’s pea-brain when he demonstrated he is capable of learning nothing, not from his own past actions nor the recent ones of teammates, his Arsenal time seemed like it must surely be coming to a halt this time.

As Sky Sports dissected the ‘action’, Evra told of a time Henry had invited him to his house to watch Arsenal play. He turned on the TV to see Granit Xhaka leading Arsenal out as captain and promptly turned it off.

“I can’t watch my team and Xhaka being the captain,” Henry reportedly said.

 

Even though Xhaka was stripped of the captaincy, he has still been handed the armband on occasion, despite not apologising for his actions when he told fans where to go.

Did he apologise after this? Did it matter? Did he care?

Probably not.