Henry hammers home hat-trick

Arsenal 3

Mon, 20 Jan, 2003 - 00:00

Mark Bradley

Thierry Henry was yet again the Arsenal match-winner, striking his second hat-trick of the season to restore the Gunners' five-point lead ahead of Manchester United. The prolific Frenchman who scored his 100th goal for the club last weekend is already en route to the next century target.

However, that was not half of the story of an incident-packed match in which Arsenal stumbled before finally picking up the gauntlet thrown down by Alex Ferguson after his side's victory against Chelsea on Saturday.

West Ham, for whom keeper David James was in brilliant form, left Highbury with grievances aplenty as the fates conspired to undermine their own hopes of staying up.

The Hammers were distinctly unimpressed when an early penalty was awarded against them for Steve Lomas' brush with Robert Pires. They were then bristling with indignation when Lomas was sent off for the offence. And they were absolutely furious when, after Jermain Defoe had cancelled out Henry's penalty, an apparent elbow by Dennis Bergkamp on Lee Bowyer went unpunished as he crossed for Henry to head his second on 71 minutes.

There will soon come a time when the FA send their own video technicians to film Arsenal's games. It would at least save them postage.

This time and for the second time this season, in his case it is Bergkamp who will surely be investigated for the clash that left Bowyer clutching his head.

However, Henry then struck his third in the closing stages and West Ham were left to rue an afternoon on which nothing went their way.

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger defended Bergkamp afterwards:

"I didn't see it. I thought he was protecting the ball and I haven't seen the replay yet. At Arsenal there's always more made of things but we're used to that."

He continued: "We are happy because we got the three points.

Subconsciously I think we lost a bit of our sharpness and concentration against 10 men but it was a case of being patient.

The manager enthused about Henry's contribution, adding on Premiership Plus Live: "I'm very happy for Thierry because he can be great in the air when he's in the box.

"You could see his absolute determination to score today."

On the chase for the Premiership title, he said: "We and Manchester United both have difficult fixtures but we're in a good position."

Henry said: "We had some chances but didn't put them in (West Ham goalkeeper) David James played well today, and I don't understand how they are at the bottom of the table."

Reflecting on Lomas' dismissal, he said: "I don't know about it but we knew it would be difficult for them after that.

"Sometimes a team down to 10 will dig in and try to play better, and they did.

"We gave them an opportunity to come back but after that we wanted to do well.

"After Manchester United won yesterday the only result we wanted today was a win."

Hammers boss Roeder was left bemoaning the two decisions by referee Mike Dean which went against his team.

He explained: "Pires didn't need any excuse to fall over for the penalty he was barely touched.

"I've only seen it once, but he was down as soon as he could get down and then there's the double whammy of our player being sent off."

For the second goal he added: "Bergkamp has clearly put his hand in Lee's face and pushed him over.

"He knows he's been fouled and the majority of people in the ground saw it but the most important person didn't and we've been punished.

"We were very resilient today and we've got to take heart.

"On a more fortuitous day we could have got a point."

ARSENAL: Seaman, Lauren, Keown, Campbell, van Bronckhorst, Wiltord (Jeffers 87), Silva, Edu (Parlour 68), Pires, Henry, Bergkamp (Luzhny 87).