London: Arsenal legend Thierry Henry has criticised the English football club for over stressing Alexis Sanchez following the striker’s injury against Norwich City in a Premier league match.
The 26-year-old was taken off on Sunday after he pulled a hamstring during Arsenal’s 1-1 draw with Norwich City. The Chilean international has played in majority of Arsenal’s matches of the English Premier League so far.
“Obviously, if you ask Alexis Sanchez if he is OK, he is going to say yes. If a guy says no then he might as well leave the club. You are there to play,” Henry was quoted as saying by skysports.com on Monday.
“But I think you almost don’t have to ask him anything if you want to rest him. You need to go out and say nothing or, ‘I’m resting you today and that’s the way it is’.”
“Again, I personally wouldn’t have liked that when I was a player, but you take it on the chin and see the bigger picture because you want to be out there and play the whole season.”
Henry also took a dig at manager Arsene Wenger for not substituting Sanchez in the last few minutes of an easy Champions League victory last midweek against Dynamo Zagreb.
“It was difficult to rest him today because you want to win, but I go back to the Zagreb game. With 20 minutes to go at 3-0, you can give him a little rest,” he said.
“Obviously I would like to think the 14 hours travelling, playing away with Chile for the World Cup in South America, doesn’t help.”
“Now we can all say the same thing. If he played today and he scored he would have said, ‘I was right to play him’, but he got an injury so we are obviously going to say he should have rested him,” he concluded.
