Henry Out For Season; Saha, Ribéry and Vieira out for Lithuania

Injuries before the Argentina game required coach Raymond Domenech to use some creativity on defense. In the upcoming Euro qualifier against Lithania and friendly against Austria, he’ll need to use his imagination up front.

Arsenal announced today that Thierry Henry will be out for the season with stomach muscle and groin injuries. (Ouch! What a painful combination! I didn’t think he looked at all well vs. PSV this week.) Or, in the immortal words of my brother-in-blog Trent at Arsenal Offside, “Thierry Henry’s Troublesome Groin. Well, is there any other kind?” (Hey, it made me giggle.)

Except it’s hard to giggle much when you realize that Henry will not just miss Lithuania, but also the Euro qualifiers against Ukraine and Georgia in June. Not a pleasant thought. Yes, I’ve said in the past that I thought the France offense was a little too dependent on Henry, but taking him completely out of the equation wasn’t what I had in mind.

Of course, Domenech probably has the option of having Henry examined by the France NT doctors before June. And if their opinion differed from Arsenal’s doctors and decided he was better in June? Well, wouldn’t THAT make Arsenal’s Arsene Wenger happy! Unless, of course, Henry heads off to Barcelona over the summer, in which case he’s not Arsene’s problem anymore.

Henry’s injury would offer a great opportunity for our self-proclaimed un-flashy striker Louis Saha, except for the fact that Saha is himself injured and out for a month or so. He picked up a thigh injury in training for Manchester United this week. Really rotten luck. Add that to the Franck Ribéry foot injury and the Patrick Vieira thigh injury and we could be looking at a very different team from what we usually see.

So who benefits? I’m guessing Sidney Govou for Ribéry. Cross your fingers that he has a better game than he did in Lyon’s Champions League game this week.

And I can’t see Domenech not starting my favorite bad boy Nicolas Anelka now, since he’s fit and in form and has scored recently for Bolton. And after Argentina I would have guessed we wouldn’t be seeing David Trézéguet back in Bleu any time soon, but I’m guessing that won’t be the case now. What do you think? An Anelka-Trézéguet pairing? I’m sure Djibril Cissé will also be called, and might be paired with Anelka in lieu of Trézéguet. And Sylvain Wiltord and my favorite uncapped hopeful Karim Benzema both looked fairly solid this week for Lyon, so I’m thinking one or both might get the nod.

And I have no idea who could possibly replace Patrick Vieira. My mind just comes up blank.

So what do you think? If you were Domenech, who would you start?