HIGHBURY HAD HALF-EMPTIED BUT, ten minutes after the final whistle, those spectators who had remained stood and marvelled at the highlights shown on the big screen. Correction: the highlight. It was almost an hour after Thierry Henry had conjured the back-heeled nutmeg par excellence, to score Arsenal’s second goal against Charlton Athletic, yet an audible gasp still reverberated around the old stadium as the replay was shown. Genius can be appreciated over and over again.

And so it should be. Henry had received the ball with his back to goal six yards out, with Jonathan Fortune, the Charlton defender, glued to his shirt. Options included a return pass to José Antonio Reyes or a lay-off to Dennis Bergkamp but Henry, oblivious to the wider picture, arrowed the ball through the legs of Fortune with precision and power. Even the hard-bitten members of the Fourth Estate gazed at each other in amazement. In years to come, “I was there” will be a proud boast.

Arsenal had gone 2-0 ahead, shrugging off the feisty first-half challenge of Charlton, and went on not only to extend their unbeaten league run to 48 matches but also to maintain their average of more than three goals scored per game in the Barclays Premiership this season. They could have amassed five or six or seven, as Charlton collapsed in the face of wave after wave of attack, but settled for four. Goodness knows what could have happened had they got seriously ruthless.

However, it was Henry’s outrageous strike that dominated the post-match discussion. His second goal and seventh of the season, 21 minutes later, owed much to brute force and the perfection of Reyes’s pass, the lethal shot cannoning past Dean Kiely off the crossbar. Yet all anyone wanted to talk about was the “backmeg”, a glorious finish cloaked in wonderment.

Henry, as usual, felt moved to understatement. “I didn’t know this would happen,” he said. “I just tried something and it worked. Sometimes it doesn’t. I just tried it and it went in. It’s the kind of thing that a striker should always play with instinct.” When the poll for Fifa world player of the year opens shortly, there can be few candidates who can match such brilliance. Unless political influences are at play, again, mortgages and inheritances should be wagered on this dead cert.

Arsène Wenger, the Arsenal manager, sees the wider picture, his fellow Frenchman’s devotion to his chosen profession. There are no skeletons in Henry’s cupboard, no squandering of valuable down-time. “He is such a great player,” Wenger said. “His powers of recovery also. I think that it must be genetic.

“He lives such a clean life, he just lives football. He dedicates his free time to recover for the next game, doesn’t drink and doesn’t go out, either. If you ring him at ten o’clock, he will be in. He is 27 and the best is in front of him. He is amazing — his technical touch, his speed, his intelligence.”

Bergkamp, no slouch at bewildering innovation, added to the eulogies. “It’s just astonishing how Thierry came up with that,” he said. “It just shows what enormous talent he has.” Alan Curbishley, the Charlton manager, concurred. “He must be the most exciting player there is,” he said. “And it’s not just the goals he scores. It’s the other things, the assists, that he does as well.”

After the bust-up on the bus in midweek between Lauren and Patrick Vieira, in the wake of the 1-1 Champions League draw against Rosenborg in Trondheim, Arsenal made a great show of unity before kick-off. Hugs and embraces all round, a point to prove. No love-in, though, once the match had started, with Charlton’s niggly aggression earning them plaudits if nothing else.

Yet it drained them and when Fredrik Ljungberg poked in Bergkamp’s cross, after Jason Euell’s pass had gone astray and Kiely went walkabout, they had little more to give. “Trouble is,” Curbishley said, “you try so hard not to get beaten that you haven’t got much left when you try to win.”

Henry’s memorable double and a skidding angled drive from Reyes, as the heavens opened to drench Highbury, completed the job. Another undefeated notch for England’s Invincibles, with No 49 due up against Aston Villa on October 16 and the landmark 50 against Manchester United at Old Trafford on October 24.

“Even if Arsenal win the league again, they still have to be judged in Europe,” Curbishley said. “But here, they just seem to get stronger each year. There’s no lull, no let-up, and that’s a very difficult thing to do. They just have no weak links.”

Three neat touches

Gianfranco Zola, for Chelsea v Norwich, 2002 Extraordinary back-heeled volley

Trevor Sinclair, for QPR v Barnsley, 1997
The perfect overhead kick

Paolo Di Canio, for West Ham v Wimbledon, 2000
Exquisite scissors-kick volley