The return of the best

There's often a hysterical reaction, one way or another, to a club re-signing an old legend. As a Liverpool fan I remember the return of Robbie Fowler was greeted with such unadulterated joy by many fans who believed he would return fully to his former greatness as well as derision by fans of other clubs who gleefully taunted Liverpool for looking to the past and signing a 'has-been'. To be fair, the answer was probably somewhere between the two as Fowler's return was very much a positive thing with flashes of his old magic but he never looked like being the 'old' Fowler.

I mention this because two surprising returns have happened this week, the most staggering of which is the coming out of retirement of Paul Scholes before Man United's game against City on Sunday. Scholes was unquestionably a superb player in his time, but I think most would acknowledge that that time had gone a reasonable time before his 'retirement' at the end of last season so to bring him back aged 37 for a few months, when he's been out of the game for eight months seems a little baffling. Of course he can't be judged on one game, but he looked very rusty indeed against City and I can't see the move being much of a success.

As for the other significant return, he of course made quite a considerable impact in his first outing back. Thierry Henry, his handball against Ireland aside, is in my opinion one of the most difficult players to dislike I've ever come across. Of course he is ridiculously cool in the Will Smith kind of way, he is a player with a big heart and I defy anyone (apart from Leeds fans) not to feel a certain happiness to see him score in an Arsenal shirt again. But of course first and foremost, he is quite possibly the greatest player ever to grace the Premiership. In the opinion of this writer, he is undoubtedly the best. He brought the term 'fantasy football' to mind in his first spell at Arsenal; Kanu was around at a similar time who I always found fabulously entertaining for trying outrageous, cheeky trickery even if it was not exactly successful every time. The outrageous thing with Henry was this stuff actually worked! He was quite simply on another planet and he had absolutely everything as a player, a sheer phenomenon and he scored goals that no other player could come close to. To see him back is great, time will tell what kind of impact he'll really have in this brief return, but nothing can ever take away his status as one of the all time greats.