Jordan Henderson is leaving Brentford after a year at the Gtech – but not all Bees fans are sad to see him leave.
The 36-year-old signed a two-year deal at Brentford last summer, which has been mutually terminated to allow Chelsea to complete a free transfer and continue in their plan to reunite the 2010/11 Sunderland squad, following their agreement to sign Danny Welbeck.
So surely there's some kind of sadness from fans to see a leader like that leave… right?
Jordan Henderson has thanked Brentford fans - but Brentford fans aren't wholly united in gratitude for Jordan Henderson
In a heartfelt statement on the Bees' website, Henderson thanked the west Londoners for giving him the opportunity to return to the Premier League after stints in Saudi Arabia and at Ajax, paying tribute to the staff, owners, his team-mates, and “most of all”, the supporters.
“Their backing never changed, and the connection they have with the club is clear to see,” Hendo wrote. “They care deeply about Brentford and they support the team in the right way every step of the journey.”
Yet not all Brentford fans reciprocate the love in quite the same way – and not just because the replacement appears to be a club-record move for highly-rated Ligue 1 talent Mamadou Sangare, as per The Athletic.
The former Reds man hadn't been in the best of form in the second half of the season anyway, but appeared to burn all bridges in arguably the biggest game in Brentford's history on the final day of last season: Keith Andrews' side travelled to Anfield to face a wholly beatable Liverpool, with Yehor Yarmolyuk injured, and Henderson stepping into the side.
Henderson didn't have his best game, but the fume really started when his number was raised by the fourth official – and with Brentford a goal down after an hour, the midfielder took his sweet time to leave the pitch, lapping up the applause from the Merseyside faithful and shaking hands with his former team-mates, with some suggesting that he treated a match of critical significance as a testimonial-esque opportunity to get the send-off from Liverpool fans that he never received upon leaving in 2023.
“If you thought this was bad, he then proceeded to laugh and joke with the opposition at full time and embark on a lap of honour BEFORE acknowledging us whilst every single other player and staff member was stood there gutted in front of the away end,” one Brentford fan posted on X (formerly Twitter), with plenty of other Bees followers chiming in with adjectives such as, “shambolic”, “disgraceful” and “selfish”.
There's certainly no doubting that Henderson is a leader among his peers, as proven by his selection at World Cup 2026 and glowing praise in public from the likes of Jude Bellingham and Morgan Rogers – but it's certainly not the first time that the star has rubbed fans up the wrong way.
In 2023, a move to Al-Ettifaq was heavily criticised by many, given that Henderson had been a staunch ally of the LGBTQ+ community.
“I’m comfortable knowing exactly what I am and exactly what I stand for,” Henderson explained in a controversial interview with The Athletic's Adam Crafton and David Ornstein, when talking about the move. “But I get, and I can accept, not everyone’s going to get that. So that’s why I can only apologise to those people if they feel like that.”
It'll certainly be interesting to see what kind of reception the England man gets when he returns to Brentford next term.
