UNTOLD ARSENAL: The stories no one else covers » Blog Archive » Vela and Henry – Arsenal new and old meet in Barca
On 3 Feb Henry now at Barca and Carlos Vela (on loan at Osasuna) both played – and quite logically it was in the Barca Osasuna game
Carlos Vela has already been scoring regularly for Osasuna – a club tipped for relegation, but by no means certain to go down. He’s 18, cool, and looks more than ready to fit into our group of first team strikers. Which raises a question – will anyone depart?
Playing in the number 21 shirt he completed 84 minutes of the game – going off just before Barca scored the only goal.
Henry however made only 62 minutes and looked but a shadow of his former self. There were moments, but you certainly don’t hold your breath any more when he gets the ball. It was thought that he would make way for Ronaldinioioioio who had been warming up for 3 hours – but Ronald (looking slimmer than he has done for a long time) had to wait even longer for his first entrance since his last one. Which was quite a bit of time ago.
My guess (and its no more than that of course) is that Henry wishes he had never come, and Vela can’t wait to get to Arsenal. The pitch was dreadful with lakes forming over much of the ground and players swimming around. The crowd, had they been English, would have sung, “You only sink when you’re swimming” – but they weren’t, so they didn’t.
There was mud all over the place, and the question of accurate passes along the ground was not one of the options. It was, in fact, fairly awful.
But Vela showed some amazing twists and turns but he spent a lot of time tracking back to help the defence. He was fouled a lot and granted only modest protection from the ref. So, good preparation for the EPL.