I beg to differ.
Let’s say Gabi’s individual price is X and Diego’s is Y.
You say that Gabi + Diego X+Y.

You say that once Zaragoza had sold Gabi, the other brother would come for less. Now that’s fine when talking about WalMart but in football it’s different.

Once Zaragoza had sold one of their best and most important players it makes no sense for them to decide to sell another one of their fundamental players for less than expected. Au contraire, they would sell him for more. I assure you that no team would throw in a discount when selling two important players. The price would actually go up.

I conceed that maybe in the long term Milito would have been a better buy I think that he would have cost more than Henry and Henry was a short term buy anyway as Bojan and Dos Santos are on their ways.

But your comment about physical presence is interesting – that is one of the things I attempted to highlight about Diego Milito. Although he is hardly bulky, Milito is excellent at holding players off and holding the ball up, and regularly scores from headers, qualities that are frankly lacking in Barcelona´s current squad, especially whilst Toure Yaya has been away.

I´m frankly a little bored of Rijkaard so I reckon it´s about time he and Ronaldinho left.

I accept your points and my article was intended to criticise Barcelona far more than Henry himself. I have found myself defending Henry to Barcelona fans on numerous occasions, singling out the effort that he puts in week in, week out. You have to understand that I have nothing against Henry – I just think that the signing was ill-conceived. Indeed, Spiral, your remark about 2006 being Henry’s worst year is one reason why I don’t think Barcelona should have signed him. Such a crippling psychological blow is difficult to recover from and I’m not sure that Henry will ever get back to the way he was before both finals were lost. You indeed mention that it was 50/50 – but Barcelona needn’t have taken such a gamble, it was inviting unnecessary pressure upon the club.

Milito is an unspectacular but excellent player. Your comment about no other teams going for him is not conclusive. Real initially went in for him before changing their minds. And I can name tens of players who could be playing for better teams and whose big move hasn’t yet materialized. Berbatov, for one.

Bear in mind that if Henry suddenly rediscovers his form on a regular basis, and fits well into the Barcelona set-up, I shall be forced to eat my words and will happily accept that I was wrong. Let’s hope, for Henry’s sake, that such is the case.

Getting back to the point of this discussion, we can all agree that the future is very hard to predict with this sort of thing.

Hugo –

Yes, we should look at every decision made in view of the effects they eventually have. But i think you over-extended yourself here in the manner you wrote this article. I feel you were being too overly harsh on Henry & Barcelona in general. For all his faults Henry never gives less than 110% in every match he plays, something which has been sorely lacking from players like Ronaldinho. He may be struggling with injuries but when he’s on the pitch he keeps his head down & gets on with the job as best as he can.
He has been criticised in the past for being a bit selfish sometimes with the ball, but at Barcelona i see him unflinchingly setting up many assists & celebrating with his teammates without holding back. You yourself mentioned the rapport he has with Bojan & that in itself is no bad thing & should not be underestimated.

I don’t agree with the way you made many generalisations in your article. In my opinion Henry still has the hunger & the drive that made him great, I believe he still yearns for the Champion’s League medal that has eluded him thus far. You forget that 2006 was the worst year for him psychologically & physically. Reaching two different finals of two great tournaments (in the lone striker’s role no less!) & losing in such spectacular fashions one after the other after great runs to the final (the goals against Real Madrid & Brazil!) of both tournaments….Which other star player has gone through that lately? Yet still he laces up his boots & gets on with playing & never complains & is always supportive of his teammates.

Do not underestimate the value his class & his eminence has on other players within the team. In the absence of Ronaldinho & Eto’o Barca didn’t have much in the way of experienced strikers for most of the season who could play at such a big club at that level with two very young & relatively inexperienced teammates.

I’d wager that Diego would have had a tougher time coping with such pressure to perform at Barcelona under such conditions. Again its a 50-50 chance that might have gone either way.

You also forget that Barcelona are still only 5 points behind Real Madrid, despite all the crap & criticism the team has undergone this season. There is still time to snatch the title away from the champions. I would like to see a tit for tat like what happened towards the end of last season.

Anything’s possible. So don’t rule out Henry & Barca just yet.

Henry was the wrong type of player at the wrong time, and very few people felt that his signing made footballing sense. The fact that Cruyff was “salivating” at the prospect was entirely typical – Cruyff meddles far too much in Barca affairs and the current azulgrana policy seems to be to sell shirts and be loved across the world, not to construct a balanced first team and squad.

I am not criticising Wenger at this point – he’s an irrelevance to me. At the end of the day the decision was not Wenger’s, it was Henry’s – and so any arguments about selling him one year earlier at a far higher price are effectively nonsensical.

Barcelona were fully aware of Henry’s fitness problems, and indeed his psychological problems, when they made his signing. Not all culés were happy with the move, either. The problem is, they believed their own hype about the “fantastic four”, and the club continues to live in the shadow of the dream team (which is another reason why Cruyff wields so much power).

I’m also not a Barcelona fan, so your decision to paint me as such is incorrect and unnecessary. I am a football fan and a Diego Milito fan, this much is true.

Yes, this is hindsight. So what? Would you like every decision ever taken to be cast aside indiscriminately when future events force us to look at it in a different light? So basically, we go on repeating the same mistakes and never think about where we went wrong?

Great reading as always. Just to pick you up on something, I think that City would have certainly enquired about the boy, and he looks to be having a great season. However, as with lots of enquiries City made during the January window, I think they were quoted far too much. I don’t know if it was the case with Milito but it seems a problem with the Spanish release clauses, like Luis Fabiano (something like £44m).

I wasn’t exactly falling off my chair in excitement when I heard we’d signed Benjani, but at the end of the day it’s only an initial £3.75m (I think) and if you compare what it would have cost to get Milito (not saying I wouldn’t like to see him, I would), it’s just better business in what’s a very awkward window. Maybe in the summer something could happen, who knows?