It's all down to Wenger, says Henry

It is no coincidence that Thierry Henry has played the best football of his life over the past two years, for coaxing and encouraging in that time has been Arsene Wenger.

Two more goals from the 23-year-old French striker brought his total for the season to eight and earned Arsenal a 2-0 win at Derby and briefly put them on top of the Premiership on Saturday.

It was a fitting way for Arsenal manager Wenger to celebrate his fifth anniversary in charge at Highbury and Henry has no doubts about the impact by the manager on the club and on him.

"He has helped me so many times," said Henry. "His strength is the way he handles players. He knows what they need. Some need an arm round them, some need to be handled differently. But he brings out the best in them. He has done a fantastic job at the club.

"Since he has arrived, the club have always been in the top two in the Premiership. He won The Double. Arsenal have also been in the Final of the UEFA Cup, another FA Cup Final and also a semi-final as well as the quarterfinals of the Champions League."

The match at Pride Park was the perfect stage for Arsenal to respond after Wednesday's 1-0 Champions League defeat against Panathinaikos in Athens and respond they did.

Even the dismissal early in the second half of Martin Keown for a second yellow card failed to demoralise them. In fact, it brought the best out of Arsenal.

"It was a special win," added Henry. "After the game in Athens we were a bit hurt because we didn't perform well. We wanted to show everyone what we could do on Saturday.

"Derby are difficult to play on their own ground and it was important that we get some points after the disappointing draw against Bolton in our previous Premiership match. We showed that we have character in the squad and quality players." The game at Derby coincided with Patrick Vieira's most assertive performance of the season in his new role as the stand-in captain for Tony Adams and Henry believes that it was his team-mates who contributed to that display.

"As long as we play as a team, Patrick has less work to do," said Henry who, with Vieira, Robert Pires and Sylvain Wiltord reports for international duty for France later this week as they prepare for their firstever clash with Algeria.

"He can go forward. Everyone was closing down so Patrick could attack more. Maybe sometimes we didn't help him enough to allow him to express himself on the pitch."