Thierry Henry Downplays Arsenal’s Community Shield Win, ‘City Didn’t Care’

By The Editor
on 23rd August 2023

Arsenal legend Thierry Henry believes the Community Shield win is null and void…

Arsenal hero Thierry Henry has downplayed our Community Shield win against Manchester City earlier this month, claiming the game meant much more to us than the champions, he said on Seaman Says.

Henry, speaking on his former teammates’ podcast, stated that the Community Shield always means less to “the big team” and wonders what Mikel Arteta’s men can take from that game.

Pep Guardiola certainly named a very strong side for the encounter and celebrated wildly when the treble winners took the lead through Cole Palmer.

Leandro Trossard’s deflected effort in the final minutes forced the game to be decided by a penalty shootout which we prevailed in.

While some concluded that it was an early psychological blow for us to land on The Citizens, Henry doesn’t see it that way.

“When you’re the big team and you lose it, you don’t really care,” Henry said.

“I’m gonna have to be honest. I’m an Arsenal fan and whatever, but the team that’s under sees it as; ‘we need to beat them!’

“Understand me well, you need to understand the sides. If I was playing for Arsenal and we beat Man City I would’ve been all over it because you’re dying to beat them.

“But you need to understand on the other side…we have to play the European Super Cup and then Newcastle. I don’t know if there was the same attitude from Man City,” he added.

As always, Henry is entitled to his opinion. One imagines if the narrative would’ve been reversed had Manchester City claimed the win.

Would Mikel Arteta have been afforded all these theories that he wasn’t taking the game seriously and that it had no bearing on the Premier League campaign?

I suspect the talk would’ve been about Arteta’s continued drought against his former boss and a mental block from the team against the champions.

At the end of the day, lifting silverware can never be a bad thing.