Thierry Henry has suggested that Francis Coquelin was fortunate to stay on the pitch during Arsenal’s victory over Crystal Palace.
Sky Sports quoted the Gunners’ record goalscorer as saying that Coquelin’s foul on James McArthur could easily have earned the second yellow card that Eagles manager Alan Pardew claimed it was worth.
“He left himself exposed for a red card,” Henry argued, adding he was “lucky he was allowed to be substituted.”
He added that Coquelin, given that he was on a yellow card, was rash making the tackle in the first place.
“In the second half, since you came out and are still on a yellow, you do not need to commit the way he did.
“You have to be smarter, play with your brain. Go, put pressure, stop.”
Henry did, however, have praise for the team as a whole, based on their ability to take three points from a tricky cross-London trip to Selhurst Park, saying that while their performance was “not the ‘Arsenal way’ maybe” gaining three points from a trip to Palace “is not easy” – especially after the opening-day slip against West Ham piled on the pressure for the Gunners, for whom “Arsene [Wenger] said it himself, zero points after two games and it would have been a bit of trouble.”
Fortunately for the team, that turned out to be a mere hypothetical.
