Arsenal and Manchester United heroes Thierry Henry and Paul Scholes are taking a gamble with their reputations

WHILE the maxim which musicians are contractually obliged to live by is the Bob Dylan-endorsed don’t look back, the one footballers are meant to have sworn to obey is don’t go back.

But footballers, like musicians, are emotive beings and are often easily drawn to places where they once could rely on adoration.

It’s a human response to want to go back, to want to return to when everything came easier and the limbs were younger. Both Thierry Henry and Paul Scholes are the latest to follow their hearts rather than listen to the nagging fears in their heads. Physically, they don’t claim to be anything other than diminished forces but then class, as Henry proved last night within ten minutes of opening his second chapter at Arsenal, is permanent. Neither clearly believe that they are in danger of wrecking their legacies – and Henry, whose remarkable winner against Leeds United was his 227th goal for the club, could well be right.

It’s a dilemma many face. Football loves a returning-hero story and the fans relish the idea – until it goes wrong. The game is littered with those who succumbed to the lure of going home. They are often horrified to discover that while home might not have changed their bodies have. Just ask Motherwell fans who looked on aghast as Brian McClair threatened to demolish his reputation in 13 goal-less games following his return to the club where he started his career. The trouble was he had suddenly turned into a 34 year-old player whose best years were behind him.

Fortunately, second stints are sometimes so underwhelming that few are able to recall them.

Often circumstances, too, can contrive to rob a player of a chance to succeed on their return. Neil McCann is one. He sustained a serious injury on his second debut for Hearts in 2006 and struggled to re-capture his form following a six-month lay-off. He doesn’t completely regret the decision to turn down a couple of offers from English Premier League clubs to sign on again for Hearts, where he had excelled in his first stint between 1996 and 1998, but admits the “heart-strings” had helped pull him in the direction of Tynecastle, in defiance of what others advised.

“I had a great deal of affection for the club and so the chance to return was just too good to turn down,” he told The Scotsman yesterday. “But it was a bitter-sweet experience.” McCann understands the tug which Scholes and Henry have felt. He has a special empathy with the former, having also returned from what many presumed had been retirement to score a winning goal for Dundee last season against Raith Rovers. “If I didn’t feel I could have still done it then I wouldn’t have come back – and I am sure it’s the same for Scholes and Henry,” he said.

Both these players share a common desire to protect very special legacies as players at the clubs to which they are returning. Few will seek to operate in the shadow of previous glories quite so obviously as Henry, who recently looked on as a statue of him in his first spell at Arsenal was unveiled at the Emirates. He cried tears then. Those Arsenal fans who worship him will be the ones with moistened eyes should he fail to live up to this immortal bronze reminder of another time, though, given his instant impact last night, it seems unlikely he will fail in this mission. There is nothing quite so overbearing for Scholes deal with outside Old Trafford. He might feel as though he has nothing to lose after an end to his Manchester United career which saw him fail to turn the tide when coming on as a substitute in a one-sided Champions League final against Barcelona in May. His FA Cup farewell was even less memorable and saw him sent off in a semi-final defeat to Manchester City, the team he made a winning comeback against on Sunday, and in the same competition. Although some described him as looking sluggish, his pass completion rate was as exemplary as ever. He might have a harder job re-discovering both his fitness and sharpness as he aims to put his 37-year-old legs through a few bonus months at the end of a glorious career. Henry, who has been playing regularly in the States, does not have the same problem with physical conditioning. However, for someone who relied so obviously on speed, even the slightest reduction in pace will be glaringly apparent. It’s clear he isn’t coming back as an improved version, as Dave McPherson felt he was each time he returned to Rangers and Hearts.

The centre-half laughed in the face of those who cautioned against going back, doing it twice. He won the treble second time around with Rangers and then, when he left Ibrox to return to Hearts again, timed it to coincide with a first Scottish Cup success for the club in more than 40 years. “I was advised at the time that it was not beneficial to go back to the same club you were at before,” he said.

“But each time it was a different manager and a different set-up so I just put that behind me and thought: ‘I am going to give it a go’. Rangers were on a bit of a roll at the time and things were looking positive. I was also still young at the time – there was no doubt in my mind about going back. I just gave it my best shot.”

McPherson felt the familiarity of the surroundings helped him on each occasion. “Plus the fact that I knew a lot of the players,” he added. Rangers had also improved, making a return more desirable. “They had won a lot more, their profile was higher,” he said. “And my own profile was higher having become an international player. It just slotted together nicely.”

The pertinent fact in McPherson’s tale of two cities is that each return came when he was the right side of 30 – just so in the case of his transfer to Hearts for a second time in 1994. Henry and Scholes, in contrast, must battle Old Father Time as well as struggle with the weight of their own history, though both can be more than satisfied with their efforts so far.