Thierry Henry ready to accept Arsenal offer to replace Wenger as string of losses continues

FORMER Arsenal striker Thierry Henry has indicated that he will be willing to replace current manager Arsene Wenger at the end of the season if the club asks him to step in and take over given the current spate of bad results.

Arsenal are currently sitting sixth in the English Premiership and are looking at another successive season of not qualifying for the Uefa Champions League. Yesterday, more misery was heaped on the club after it lost 1-2 away to lowly Brighton and manager Wenger is under increasing pressure having led his side to four consecutive defeats in all competitions.

Henry, 40, an Arsenal legend and the club's all-time record goalscorer is currently the assistant manager of Belgium's national team and is viewed as a long term replacement for Mr Wenger. Reacting to the pressure yesterday, Henry, said that he can only replace Mr Arsene Wenger as manager, if the club asked for his help.

Henry, who has many times in the past indicated an  interest in the job, insisted that he has never backed down from a challenge. He indicated, however, that he would only be willing to take the job if Mr Wenger who signed him for Arsenal walked away from the job.

"I’m a competitor and you don’t back down from a challenge. We are hypothetically speaking before people jump ahead of everything but I have never backed down from a challenge since I was young.

“If I had listened to people who were talking about where I was going to be, I would not have been here. When I arrived at Arsenal, they said to me, why are you outside of the box, you will never score goals?’ with my position being on the left or whatever it was," Henry added.

Arsenal fans honoured their former player in 2008, declaring Henry the club's greatest player and in two other 2008 surveys, Henry emerged as the favourite Premier League player of all time among 32,000 people surveyed in the Barclays 2008 Global Fan Report. On 10 December 2011, Arsenal unveiled a bronze statue of Henry at the Emirates Stadium as part of its 125th anniversary celebrations.

“When I came back to play for Arsenal, everybody, all my friends were saying, it can only tarnish your legacy, why are you going back there? If you love a place and they ask I repeat, they ask, for help, you are always going to say yes.

“What I don’t want to see is what’s happening to him. I would like him to have the last word, whatever word it’s going to be,” Henry added.