Where does Thierry Henry rank among Premier League forwards?

Thierry Henry should be regarded as the greatest centre-forward of the Premier League era, writes Adam Bate...

The Frenchman's distinguished career has finally come to a close after he announced he is joining Sky Sports as a football expert and ambassador from the start of 2015 but here Arsenal's leading goalscorer is recognised as a Premier League great.

Pre-Premier League

There is an accepted wisdom that Arsene Wenger set Henry on the journey to greatness when he brought him to Arsenal but it’s worth remembering that he was France’s top scorer in their successful 1998 World Cup campaign before even making the move to Juventus. Prior to that he’d broken through at Monaco under Wenger and featured 36 times in Jean Tigana’s 1996/97 title-winning campaign.

Even that supposed failure at Juve has been overplayed according to the man himself. “There’s something that needs clearing up,” he told FourFourTwo. “First of all, I only joined them in January, which explains the limited number of games.

“I played in all of the remaining 16 games of the season, starting in 13 of them and in the last five or six games I either scored or set up a goal. One or the other. It’s true that it took me a few games to get used to the system, because we played a 3-5-2 system I wasn’t used to, but I soon adapted and started to play well. I left Juventus for other reasons, which I’ve never wanted to go into.”

Premier League great

What is true is that Wenger changed Henry’s position upon his arrival in England. Although the new signing failed to score in his first eight appearances for Arsenal, the notion that his qualities were anything but instantly obvious is undermined by the extraordinary reaction of team-mate Martin Keown when Henry finally did get off the mark in a 1-0 win over Southampton.

“When he scored his first goal I said to him that I would be able to tell my grandchildren that I had played with him,” Keown told the Mail. “He was a dramatic, driving force when he was in the zone. He was unstoppable once he realised he could win games single-handedly.”

That meant transforming himself from a speedy winger into someone who could score goals consistently. “He always had so much talent but he improved so much,” fellow Gunner Ray Parlour told Sky Sports News. “He was an athlete as well - 6ft 1, 6ft 2 but he could run once he got into his stride. He was an absolutely fantastic player. But his finishing – that was his main strength.”

Ruud van Nistelrooy was Henry’s chief goalscoring rival during his Premier League pomp. But while the Dutchman was the archetypal goal poacher, netting 150 goals in 219 games during his five years in England, Henry offered so much more – and still outscored the Manchester United striker in four of those five Premier League seasons.

Indeed, Jimmy Greaves is the only player since Victorian times who can match that feat of being the top scorer in the English top flight on four occasions. That the only other two players to have done that twice in the past century are Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer – more traditional centre-forwards – says much for Henry, the goalscorer. 

But of course, there was so much mor