Champions League Follow-up: When Thierry Henry extended his Arsenal contract in the summer, he talked about the pleasures of his relationship with the club's fans. All that seemed to have changed by Wednesday night, when he delivered a sermon from the hump in his captain's programme notes for Arsenal's Champions League match against CSKA Moscow.

Henry articulated his displeasure at the fans' expression of their frustrations against Everton on Saturday. He told supporters that his young team "could hear the crowd getting frustrated . . . it really doesn't help groaning at the players when there is still an hour to go . . . it can get on top of you".

Few Arsenal fans heeded Henry and the groaning about which he was moaning continued with every one of the 24 squandered goalscoring opportunities in the 0-0 draw against the Russian side.

Kenny Sansom, a former Arsenal captain who played 86 times for England, feels that his former team missed a trick. "I was there on Wednesday and a lot of the Arsenal fans were frustrated at the game," he said. "When Arsenal play well it works magnificently, but sometimes you have to change the way you play against certain teams. From a captain's point of view you have to make certain decisions."

For all Henry's eloquence in chiding his own club's fans, at no point did he convey to his team that they had to be more brutal in front of goal. With his experience and with the influence of his office, it should be incumbent on the captain to make the necessary tactical alterations on the pitch.

Sansom believes that it may be the fact that Henry is a striker that hinders such strategic vision. "It is very difficult for a striker to be a captain," he said. "If you are a defender in a successful attacking team like Arsenal, defensively you are not involved so much. You can see more of the game. But when you are an attacker in that side you are involved in 80 per cent of the game, so it becomes a difficult job from that position."

Sansom considers his England captain, Bryan Robson, to be the most inspirational wearer of an armband he ever played with. Sansom feels the midfielder's ability to bring the best out of others, even when not at his best himself, was a priceless commodity.

Though the former Arsenal captain passed no judgment on his successor's performance on Wednesday night, it was clear to all present that the France international was not at his lethal best. Twice Henry sent the ball wide when one on one with the CSKA goalkeeper, Igor Akinfeev. These were normally unthinkable aberrations from one so reliable and might have shaken his team's belief.

Where he did score strongly was in his unwavering encouragement for the team. "A good captain can play badly himself but make sure he tells his team-mates what he expects," said Sansom. "The captain is the person in the dressingroom who winds players up and Thierry has improved in that. Today it is more of an encouragement that players need than a rollicking, and Thierry's good at that."

That skill was in evidence on Wednesday night. Henry might have felt justified in denouncing Robin van Persie's succession of missed opportunities, or a laughable effort from Tomas Rosicky, when the Czech midfielder eschewed 10 feet of open net in front of him for a sideways pass to the goalkeeper. The 29-year-old chose to soothe instead.

"As the skipper of the team, when I got back into the dressing room, I couldn't say anything to the team," he said. "We had the right aggression, the right attitude, we played good football, we created chances once again, and we didn't put the ball in the back of the net. How Tomas's ball didn't go in, I'm still asking myself. But sometimes, football is a bit weird. The goal he scored against Hamburg, you wonder how the ball went in and sometimes, you're on the line and the ball doesn't go in.

"It is about the result but you can't also go into the dressing room being too down about it, because nine times out of 10, the ball of Tomas would have gone in. It was that time that it didn't go in."

That rationale, however, does not always seem understandable to the fans. Arsenal's manager, Arsene Wenger, takes a pragmatic view. He is aware that supporters who have paid between £885 and £1,825 to be entertained by Arsenal over the season have every right to grouse.

"In our sport you cannot expect from the fans what they are not there to give you," said Wenger. "We have to take them out of their seats and to get them on our side and not the reverse."

Guardian Service