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How do you replace a legend like Henry?

Where are they now? The 5 signings Arsenal made in the summer they sold Thierry Henry

Replacing an era-defining legend like Thierry Henry was never going to be easy, but Arsenal did a fairly decent job of it when it came to their transfer business in the summer of 2007.

The Gunners’ all-time top goalscorer had resisted a move to Barcelona after losing the 2006 Champions League final to the La Liga outfit, instead agreeing to sign a new four-year contract with Arsenal. However, a year later, following an underwhelming distant fourth-place finish, Henry decided the time was right and was sold for a £16.1million fee.

On an individual basis, the Frenchman arguably never quite recaptured the heights of his peak Arsenal years, although he did contribute to a historic treble under Pep Guardiola in his second season. What about the club he left, though? We’ve revisited the five players Arsenal signed the summer he left.

Eduardo

Arsenal didn’t even attempt to sign a like-for-like replacement for Henry, cannily recognising that it was impossible to find that in the transfer market.

They already had a young Robin van Persie, who had finished their top scorer the season before, as well as Emmanuel Adebayor, who struck a career-best 24 Premier League goals in 2007-08.

But the club did bolster their attack with a rising star from Dynamo Zagreb. Eduardo was already a full, naturalised Croatia international and showed plenty of promise in his debut season at The Emirates, yet there was always the sense he never fully recovered from the broken leg he suffered against Birmingham that season.

After a long spell on the sidelines, he returned for the 2009-10 campaign before being sold to Shakhtar Donetsk. He made over a hundred appearances and won four Ukrainian Premier League titles across two stints with the club and eventually hung up his boots after another title-winning campaign with Legia Warsaw in 2017-18.

Since retirement, he now runs a football agency in Rio and is, randomly enough, an ambassador for non-league Gillingham Town. His son is currently developing his skills in Flamengo’s academy.

Bacary Sagna

Sagna played with Henry for Les Bleus, but he never had a chance to turn out alongside the legendary forward at club level beyond a brief crossover in pre-season.

The right-back was signed for a £7million fee from Auxerre and immediately nailed down his place. He spent seven years in North London, playing almost 300 times for the Gunners, finally getting his hands on a trophy in his final appearance, the 2014 FA Cup final comeback against Hull.

He subsequently joined Manchester City on a free transfer, but he surprisingly only won a single League Cup during his three years there. He retired in 2019 after a stint with Montreal Impact.

Since calling it quits, he’s invested in a company that claims to sell “weightless rucksacks”. Sure, why not?

Lukasz Fabianski

After signing from Legia Warsaw as a relative unknown, bolstering Wenger’s goalkeeping options, Fabianski spent seven years with the club as a dedicated back-up that never quite nailed down a convincing claim for the No.1 shirt.

He left Arsenal a decade ago and has since gone on to make over 300 Premier League appearances for Swansea and West Ham. The 39-year-old is still going strong, although last season he did finally fall behind Alphonse Areola in the Hammers’ pecking order.


READ NEXT: A 12-year-old Thierry Henry proved that his style was a natural God-given gift

TRY A QUIZ: Can you name Arsenal’s XI from Thierry Henry’s debut in 1999?


Lassana Diarra

We can picture Diarra in a Chelsea shirt, even though he was only ever on the fringes there. We can definitely picture him in a Portsmouth shirt, even though his time on the south coast was relatively brief. Jose Mourinho’s Real Madrid? Absolutely.

But try as we might, we just can’t picture Diarra in an Arsenal shirt. In fact we’re not entirely convinced that a sneaky bit of Wikipedia vandalism hasn’t Mandala effected us all into believing it happened. Nice try.

Further reading shows us that Diarra did actually spend half a season at Arsenal, but only ever as a rarely-spotted second fiddle to French compatriot Mathieu Flamini.

The midfielder eventually retired in 2019 after agreeing to terminate his contract with PSG. He’s kept a low profile over the past half-decade since.

Arsenal's Kim Kallstrom, April 2014

READ: Ranking Arsenal’s 25 weirdest signings of the Premier League era

Pedro Botelho

The Brazilian left-back was signed as a teenager from Figueirense but he never made it into the first team picture. He never played for the Gunners in a senior competitive match and was loaned out to five different Spanish clubs before he returned to Brazil in 2012.

After Atletico Paranaense, Botelho has kicked on to forge a respectable, if not glittering, journeyman career in professional Brazilian football. Now 34, he’s currently turning out for lower league outfit AA Portuguesa.