IMAGINE this for a dilemma.

Your the manager of a World XI and you have to make a straight choice between Thierry Henry and Ruud Van Nistelrooy up front.

Who would you go for? The Gallic flair and the va-va-voom of the Frenchman, or the ice-cool instincts of the predatory Dutchman?

It's a tough one to call because I rate Henry and Van Nistelrooy, together with the legendary Alan Shearer, as the best three strikers in the Premiership.

But if you were to hold a gun to my head and ask me who I would ultimately like on my team-sheet then I'd have to say Henry just nudges it.

The Arsenal striker has virtually everything.

His pace and touch are unbelievable, he's got the ability to score goals out of nothing, and he creates goals for his team-mates, too.

He's certainly faster than Van Nistelrooy but I would say that the Dutchman is probably the better finisher of the two.

Henry scores a lot of his goals by running at people and taking them on, whereas Van Nistelrooy is more of a sniffer in the box.

But if you were to ask me who I'd rather play with up front then it would have to be Henry because his lightning pace gives him the edge over his rivals.

Some have hailed him as the best player in the world. I don't know if I'd quite go that far but he's probably in the top six.

And the amazing thing is, when Arsene Wenger signed him he was a winger not a striker.

I think you've got to give Arsene a huge amount of credit for transforming him into the player he is today because if you look at Henry now, he looks like he was born to score goals.

There's no doubt he's the man Rovers must stop if they plan to get anything at Highbury on Sunday.

Graeme Souness will instruct his players to defend deeply in a bid to limit the amount of space Henry can run into behind his back four.

But it's still going to require a huge amount of effort and concentration from everyone in a blue and white shirt if Rovers are to keep their little run going.

Six weeks ago, I wouldn't have given them a chance of getting a result down there.

But two wins and two successive clean sheets have suddenly changed the whole picture.

Craig Short's return has been one of the main reasons behind that.

He was immense at Birmingham last Saturday and Rovers suddenly look a lot more solid with him back in the side.

He's an old-fashioned, no-nonsense centre half who keeps things simple and he's exactly the type of defender I would have hated playing against.

In fact, he's just the type of player you need to have on top of his game at a place like Highbury.