When Leeds United rocked up to the Emirates in January 2012, Simon Grayson’s men were confident of collecting another Premier League scalp.
Two years after they knocked Manchester United out of the FA Cup, the Whites found themselves in the back yard of another Premier League giant in Arsenal.
But, unlike when they beat the Red Devils courtesy of Jermaine Beckford’s strike, the likelihood of an upset was not considered as impossible as the victory at Old Trafford in January 2010 was.
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The Gunners were themselves beaten 8-2 by Sir Alex Ferguson’s team earlier in the season, had lost Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri in the summer transfer window, and had suffered defeat on New Year’s Eve to relegation-threatened QPR thanks to Bobby Zamora’s injury-time strike.
The club was in desperate need of an injection of enthusiasm and vitality from somewhere and it certainly was not going to come from the likes of Andrey Arshavin or Marouane Chamakh.
Step forward club legend Thierry Henry, returned to north London on a loan deal from New York Red Bulls to mentor and assist rather than act as saviour.
But, in the 68th minute of that clash in January 2012, he entered the fray to unsettle and dislodge a stubborn Leeds backline.
What followed next was by no means the greatest moment of Henry’s storied and illustrious Arsenal career, but it was certainly one of the most poignant as he made a triumphant return befitting a king.
Taking the ball on the inside left position which still bore his footsteps from his previous stint at the Emirates, the veteran coolly dispatched the ball into the far corner past the despairing dive of Andy Lonergan.
“When he was in this position, I thought, ‘Oh, that’s your angle, but it’s a bit too close’,” said manager Arsene Wenger after the game.
“I thought he’d take a very strong inside shot but he made it look easy.
“I thought he was a bit too far to the left but he always had that special finishing. That was the Thierry Henry finishing.”
Despite their woeful start to the season, the Gunners rallied in the second half of the campaign to finish third in the Premier League – making it the first season since the Invincibles in 2003/04 in which Arsenal finished the top London club in the league, or in which they finished ahead of Chelsea.
It would be remiss to suggest this was all sparked by a rather standard Thierry Henry goal back in January, but the club’s most prolific marksman injected a sense of passion and pride back into a club which seemed destined to falter at the start of the season.
