Henry will again be pipped for awards

So it was again yesterday. Two goals, both virtuoso in different ways. The first, a piece of breathtaking skill, bringing the ball under control from Jose Reyes' header with one touch of the right and burying it instantly with one flash of the left, all conjured up with four Chelsea defenders within of a couple of yards of him.

Then, even if you fancy arguing about the legitimacy of his second from the quickly taken free-kick, just examine the brilliance of the execution. Nearly 30 yards out, just one step taken and with precious little backlift, he curled the ball through the narrowest gap between the retreating Eidur Gudjohnsen and a three-man wall and into the only part of the goal where Petr Cech could be beaten.

He had taken a fraction of a second to calculate and carry out all this, just as he had against Aston Villa in January.

"Everyone says I only score in small games - so it must have been a small game again," Henry shrugged with heavy irony afterwards, and who could blame him?

Still, there are those who would label him as some sort of flat track bully who disappears in crucial encounters, a charge which surely he has made a nonsense of countless times. Those same critics would doubtless pounce on his 76th minute clanger, when he fired over with the goal at his mercy.

Wenger put it in perspective. "When you're in his position, you always have to convince people in every game. But what Thierry has done compared to any other player in the world in the past year . . . well there is no comparison.

"Look at the amount of games he plays compared to the others. There's a massive difference, and nobody has as many assists as he's had."

He's right. Shevchenko has played 10 games less than Henry's 62 in all competitions for club and country. The players who wanted to be compared to Henry, added Wenger, had to convince him they were worthy to be.

It was an eloquent tribute to a man whose inspiration and goals, you could argue, Wenger has had to rely on almost too much. In his programme notes, he enthused about having had five different goal-scorers against Rosenborg because "if you have only one player scoring all your goals you will never get anywhere."

You can get somewhere, though, when the goals are being shared around, as Chelsea are proving. Yesterday's resilient effort in a marvellous encounter offered no compelling reason why they shouldn't end up as champions. But if you are scratching around for ideas for them faltering beyond the domestic arena, could it be they don't have a striker who's quite in Henry's class - not even Arjen Robben.

But then who has? Maybe, as Wenger says, no one compares. "I would give Thierry both awards," he reckoned. So would all the Highbury faithful who've this year of seen something that, apparently, the global judges cannot.