Thierry Henry ‘agrees’ to succeed Steve Bruce at Aston Villa

In the spirit of my favourite film of all time, hold on to your butts, people. Exclusive news reports breaking from The Daily Star state that Arsenal and France legend, Thierry Henry has agreed to succeed Steve Bruce as the manager of Aston Villa FC following Henry’s successful World Cup spell as the assistant manager of the Belgian national football team.

This news breaks, once more, after it was laughed off when initially reported. However, while the original story bounced around flaky gossip columns - this new story has been printed on paper by the head honcho - David Woods. I’d expect that to give this story a leg-up from ‘odd rumour’ to ‘this could be a thing’ in terms of credibility. It’s also being reported by Alan Nixon of The Sun.

Again, nothing is official until it’s - well - official, but this case is identical to the appointment of Roberto Di Matteo at Villa. A name linked, odds drop, rumours are dismissed - then the back page story drops. Of course, this could all be bluster and misleading leaks - which tend to happen to Aston Villa a lot.

Current Villa boss, Steve Bruce - is now expected to leave his role as soon as Tuesday - meaning that this ‘verbal agreement’ between Villa’s new ownership and their guy, Henry, is necessery to ensure Villa can move forward with gusto should Bruce actually be dismissed.

One thing worth mentioning - Bruce still has a case to put forward to Villa’s new Chairman, Nassef Sawiris. Henry may have agreed a tentative deal to step in, but the job is still Steve Bruce’s.

We’ll have to wait and see what happens with this one, and despite Henry’s lack of qualifications and coaching experience, it’s admittedly exciting in an odd way. Keep your ears open on this one. Who knows what could happen.