I didn’t have much time to read the Sunday papers, but I skimmed a bit of the Thierry Henry news. His split from his wife was confirmed by a statement from his solicitors, so it was not merely tabloid tittle tattle.

It was suggested that Henry left his mobile around so that his wife could find it and discover some compromising text and picture messages. The insinuation was that a row was thus created giving the player the opportunity/justification to storm out.

Putting two and two together, despite all the public pronouncements, logic heavily suggests that the move away from London effectively gave Henry the opportunity to start his personal life completely afresh, giving him a reason not to have to sacrifice an excessive amount of personal time to his daughter. If this is the case, the real losers are not Arsenal fans but Henry’s kid. Parents splitting up is never ideal, but the blow can be softened with very regular contact – whereby the sharing of the childcare arrangements on an almost daily basis will cushion the blow for the child/children involved.

Frankly, if the marriage had reached this stage, let’s face it, such a development was obviously on the cards long before Henry signed for Barcelona. Wenger has maintained it was the player’s decision to go and not his, but one wonders if – with his player’s mind perhaps not completely focussed on football – the manager realised a sale at this point would make the best of a bad situation and relieve the club of the burden of a highly-paid player who was likely to under-perform.

This is not the place to moralise about Henry’s actions. Sadly, his is a familiar tale in this day and age. However, I hope one day the truth will come out about the player’s about turn. It is understandable that he has not gone public yet, as he was hardly going to declare on signing for Barca that his marriage was falling apart and he wanted to get out of the country. But now that the reality of his personal life has come to fore, I don’t really want to hear confirmation that he has left for purely football reasons, as his solicitor’s statement states. Better silence than half-truths.