On this day in 2004, Thierry Henry produced arguably one of the greatest individual performances in Premier League history.Arsenal hadn't been in the best form heading into their game against Liverpool at Highbury.Arsene Wenger's side had been knocked out of both the Champions League and the FA Cup days before the match.And their invincible record was in serious threat when Liverpool took an early lead through Sami Hyypia.But Henry wasn't about to let their unbeaten streak come to an end.He netted the equaliser just after the 30-minute mark, taking down a ball over the top and finishing exquisitely with his left foot.Arsenal went into half-time 2-1 down, but Henry doubled his efforts after half-time.He was influential in restoring parity once again as he had a hand in Robert Pires' equaliser.And, just a minute later, he produced one of the Premier League's greatest ever individual goals.
The legendary striker picked up the ball just inside the Liverpool half and drove at goal.He went past a number of white shirts with ease, destroyed Jamie Carragher in the box, and then swept the ball into the net.But Henry wasn't done yet. He completed his hat-trick late on to put gloss on what was an extraordinary performance and a pivotal win for Arsenal.Arsenal tweeted a video of his goals from the game:
And you can watch his full highlights in a nine-minute video below:
What a performance.
Henry's incredible solo-goal was understandably the main talking point after the game.
"It just looked as if he decided to score," Wenger said, per the Independent. "He made it look simple when you know at this level how difficult it is to go past players and score."
While Henry simply said: "It was something I did on the spur of the moment,"
Henry made 369 appearances in total for Arsenal, but his performance against Liverpool exactly 16 years ago may well be his best in a red shirt.