Arsenal may have to get through a crucial period of the season without Thierry Henry, who has been carrying a foot-ligament injury for more than a fortnight. He was injured during Arsenal's draw with Middlesbrough on February 3rd and has suffered inflammation after all three of his subsequent appearances.
"I've been playing with a bad foot for two weeks now," he said after Tuesday's 1-0 defeat at PSV. "But I like to go out there even if I'm not 100 per cent fit. It is affecting me but I want to help the team."
The captain was sidelined for more than a month with neck and back problems before Christmas and, though Arsenal lost only once in his absence, Robin van Persie's broken metatarsal means they are now stretched in attack while still involved in four competitions. The defeat in Eindhoven was Arsenal's first of 2007 but Henry believes they will prosper in the second leg on March 7th.
"This was not like the time we lost (3-1 in 2004) at Bayern," he said, reflecting on their failure to overcome that deficit. "Against them we got absolutely hammered in every part of the game. It was difficult to see how we were going to come back from that one. But that didn't happen this time. We know what we have to do. And with all respect to PSV, we have showed we have enough to turn it around at home. We're still well in this tie."
Arsenal's immediate priority is Sunday's League Cup final against Chelsea and, although Henry will not be involved because Arsène Wenger intends to continue with his second string, the captain is confident they can beat the Blues for the first time in more than two years.
"We have shown we have the capacity to beat anyone, anywhere," he said. "When you win at West Bromwich, Everton, Liverpool and then knock out Spurs in the semi-final, whoever has played in all those rounds deserves to play."
Arsenal, meanwhile, will continue to compete with the other members of the big four despite carrying more than £260 million in debt, their managing director, Keith Edelman, said yesterday.
The recent takeover of Liverpool means all three of Arsenal's rivals for Champions League places are in foreign ownership, raising questions about the Gunners' ability to compete while taking on the burden of a new stadium. Revealing the club's interim results yesterday, which showed an overall loss of £8.5 million as a result of refinancing undertaken in the last quarter of 2006, Edelman said the club remained well placed to compete.
The loss is the result of a one-off finance charge of £21.4 million incurred in extending the term of £260 million in loans taken on in building the Emirates Stadium.
The extension, to 25 years, will save the club up to £10 million a year in repayments. With gate and match-day revenue for the first four months of this season more than doubling to £38 million because of the increased capacity, Edelman says the club are ready to enjoy the fruits of the move to Ashburton Grove.
Guardian Service
