James Lawton: Wenger must pray he has not left it too late to stave off twilight of the god Henry

Henry for several seasons now has delivered less than his best

There must be a certain sadness, and maybe even terrible concern, in the heart of Arsène Wenger when he takes on the invariably strenuous ambition of Jose Mourinho's Chelsea this weekend. It is an inevitable consequence of the crisis in his relationship with Thierry Henry.

You might say that in one way Henry is Wenger's greatest glory. No player has done more to illustrate the brilliance of the Arsenal manager's understanding of talent, his ability to see and exploit the difference between mere raw gifts and the capacity to convert them into a career of the highest distinction.

Henry is Wenger's masterpiece but he is also his trial, one infinitely more haunting than those imposed by such as Nicolas Anelka, Patrick Vieira and Ashley Cole at breaking points in their development under the great teacher's care.

These players, for one reason or another, lost their heart for the Wenger empire. They were distracted by flattery and inducements from other quarters. But then, not even at his most ferociously effective was Vieira so central to the Wenger ethos as Henry, who in football terms long ago became both the manager's alter ego and his dream of the best that football can offer.

Perhaps part of the problem is the sheer scale of the adoration Wenger has displayed towards his finest creation. His fit of petulance on behalf of Henry when Fabio Cannavaro was handed, with unimpeachable logic, the World Player of the Year award expressed unqualified admiration. But it was scarcely conducive to the stringent self- analysis that is obligatory at every stage of a major career - and would perhaps have been never more valuable in this last week or so when Arsenal's season needed least of all a public rift between the manager and his icon of a captain.

Cannavaro delivered the World Cup to his beleaguered, scandal-ridden football nation with a series of stunning performances. He became the heart and the soul of the Italian effort, but Wenger dismissed this in favour of Henry's contribution to Arsenal and France. This reminded us of the old truth that genius isn't always accompanied by common sense.

Henry for several seasons now has delivered less than his best. Of course, he is always capable of the sublime and, yes, he had his moments for France in the World Cup, but then one of them was so wretched many would say it automatically ruled him out as a contender for the trophy that was handed to Cannavaro. Henry's dive and feigning of injury was shocking even in an age when such duplicity has become commonplace.

Nor did he consistently deliver for Arsenal, and this lack of consistency was especially disappointing in a Champions' League final which, from the club's perspective, was dominated before and after by the question of his future. When Wenger overrode Henry and said he wouldn't play him against Spurs last week, the resulting furore was inevitable. Henry, the assumption has had every reason to run deep, gets his way, whatever his mood and whatever his form.

Against Chelsea, Arsenal confront without Henry a sharply different culture. It is one shaped relentlessly by Mourinho. However many questions you raise against his style and his methods and the shocking ruthlessness they often portray, there is no doubt about who sets the working terms of the team. It is Mourinho's way and no other.

The result has been endlessly written in the sky during the years of Chelsea's ascendancy over Arsenal. The principle of team effort, of the subjection of ego in the common cause, has been dramatically encapsulated in the consistency of such as Frank Lampard and John Terry. By these relentless standards, Henry's Arsenal is at the other pole.

It brings into the light, at a time when Arsenal are in desperate need of both unity and momentum, the vital question of manager-player relationships. Wenger has clearly felt the need to exert his authority over his greatest player, but at the latest of hours. In these days of player freedom, and celebrity, the challenge is of course so much greater than when a Bill Shankly or a Don Revie could drop a player and wait to see the effect.

Revie once ordered his dynamic midfield creation Billy Bremner to his knees and demanded that he offer a prayer of thanks for his good fortune in becoming a football star. If you have spent the best of a decade telling someone he is a god, as Wenger has tended to do, whom do you tell him to thank? Shankly axed his leading players without warning, and then sent them off to fret among the stiffs.

Such remnants of history tell of a different world but they do illuminate a fact which will never lose its relevance. No player can create his own environment without any need to be accountable. A degree of reverence has inevitably coloured our view of Henry, the artist footballer, but at some point it has to be balanced by a hard look at what he is offering. He is, after all, in a business which inevitably, and rightly, demands to know what you are going to do today. Wenger has maybe finally reached this blunt point. Whatever happens against Chelsea, he can only pray he has not left it too late.

Vaughan's emergence from shadows proves nightmare for Flintoff

There are many shocking aspects of England's failure to make a fight of the Ashes series, but unquestionably one key is a selection policy grounded in confusion.

It meant that in Adelaide this week, when there was so much else to address, the coach, Duncan Fletcher, spent much time tiptoeing around one of the more pressing questions in the wake of a second crushing defeat. It concerned the widespread dismay that the talented young spinner Monty Panesar was obliged to watch from the dressing room his squad-mate Ashley Giles bowl innocuously to some of the least aggressive fields ever set in Test match cricket.

The widespread assumption was that Giles was the firm choice of the ultra-cautious Fletcher, but the coach felt obliged to point out that when an England team flies abroad there are two selectors - the coach and the captain. It was hard to miss the implication: that Andrew Flintoff had insisted that Giles was a key member of his team.

Now there is a groundswell of belief that despite his lack of preparation, and failure to score more than a handful of runs in two trial matches, Michael Vaughan's qualities of leadership are desperately needed, the scenario becomes even more nightmarish.

Does Flintoff, his credibility as a captain already deeply questioned, vote for the return of a man who would further undermine his own shaky hold on the job and who, as it happens, is still officially captain? The inherent difficulty is only compounded by the fact England came here with three key players, Marcus Trescothick, Steve Harmison and Giles, who were shockingly under-prepared for the most demanding Test series they were ever likely to face. That Vaughan is even under consideration underlines the depth of England's disarray here.

Inevitably, you have to ask how the Australians do it. Their selectors hand down the team to captain Ricky Ponting and tell him to get on with it. It is still another cross for England that he is doing it with an utterly obsessive brilliance. Every time Ponting goes to the wicket, with such massive effect, it is plainly another stage of a personal crusade to take back the Ashes lost in England in 2005.

The extent of the predictable consequences over the next weeks have become painful to contemplate.

Pakistan's pardon of dope-tested bowlers is a negative for cricket

Pakistan managed to have their way in the matter of Darrell Hair, the obdurate, some would say pig-headed umpire who was dismissed by the International Cricket Council for his part in the Test match fiasco involving England and Pakistan in the summer.

It was a development that deeply questioned the ICC's ability properly to govern the minefield of politics and separate interests that cricket has become.

However, there must be a limit to the equivocation and Pakistan's unilateral decision to pardon their pace bowlers Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif after positive tests for steroids is a classic challenge.

The ICC has already welcomed Zimbabwe back into the Test fold, much to the satisfaction of the Mugabe regime, but it is unthinkable that Pakistan might just get away with defiance of the most basic rules of sport's World Anti-Doping Agency.

At least, it is pretty to think so.