Premier League revival after Liverpool exit and atrocious career move must have been unthinkable for Henderson | OneFootball

Asked by Athletic journalist Adam Crafton during an ill-advised and really quite regrettable interview whether his head might have been turned if “maybe a Brighton or a Brentford” had approached him in the summer of 2023 with an offer, Jordan Henderson provided an answer with little real substance.

“I wanted something that would excite me,” he said. “And that’s not to say those clubs wouldn’t excite me because they are great clubs and they come with really different challenges. But it needed to be something that I felt as though I could add value in and do and try something new – a new challenge and for different reasons.”

Henderson had just acknowledged that the prospect of playing against Liverpool “wasn’t something that I felt was right for me” at the time. Two years and some questionable career moves was enough to alter that opinion.

The Reds fell victim to one of the best home teams in the country, marshalled in the middle by Henderson, in October. The 35-year-old is in the midst of a 12-game run of league starts, his longest unbroken top-flight sequence since December 2016. And he is thriving.

In the battle of the ageing England internationals hoping to catch Thomas Tuchel’s eye ahead of the World Cup, Henderson trounced Kyle Walker in the end. Brentford and Burnley played out 80 goalless minutes before scoring four times between them in the closing stages.

Keith Andrews’ side took the dominant share, with two Henderson passes splitting a tired Burnley open.

His whipped delivery caused havoc before Igor Thiago’s second goal, and a drive into the midfield chasm the visitors left behind meant Dango Ouattara could gratefully receive his slide-rule pass to seal another three points for Brentford.

This is the role Henderson said made it an “easy decision” to don red-and-white stripes again. He is the experienced leader – the only other player older than 30 who Brentford have used all season is Ethan Pinnock, who is three years younger than Henderson and has not featured since September – but also so much more.

This is him making a difference, adding “value”, doing something “new”. Whatever doubts he might have had about Brentford years ago have been thoroughly disspelled.

The Al-Ettifaq move was a monstrous mistake, a deeply misguided choice that only Henderson can truly understand the motives behind.

But no longer need it be what defines or tarnishes a storied career, as has felt likely in the preceding years. A bad decision which will have caused irreparable damage in the eyes of some, his status on the pitch has at least been partially salvaged by Brentford’s own wise call.

It is ultimately a case of timing. The Brentford door might not have even been open when Henderson felt pushed out by Liverpool in 2023, and the opportunity to atone and prove critics wrong at this level must have added to the temptation to return in 2025.

Henderson cannot change the past, but from seemingly nowhere he has a promising Premier League future which until recently still felt unthinkable.