Sol Campbell is back at Arsenal for a third time.
The 36-year-old, a free agent after leaving Newcastle United in May, has been granted permission to use London Colney as he bids to build up his fitness and find a new club. Campbell ended up signing a short-term contract in January 2010 under similar circumstances, but there are no plans to offer the Arsenal legend a chance to prolong his stay this time.
Sol joined Newcastle last summer, after rejecting a one year contract offer by Arsenal, in favour of better terms. However, he only played seven times for the Magpies, before Alan Pardew agreed to release him at the close of the season.
Campbell is now training with the Reserve team.
if we sign that useless clown wenger must go
You thick phuck! He is TRAINING at LC.
But I dont see why the tight arse cant join a freaking gym though!
And if we don’t sign the ‘useless clown’ who was the bedrock of the Invincibles, YOU must go. Forever. And support the Spuds. Deal?
What an idiot you are. Wow. Its one thing having the thought its a whole other level to write it down.
you douche. i suppose ljundberg, pires, vieira and henry are all useless clowns now they’re old/retired or playing in crap leagues?
get a clue and show some respect to an arsenal great.
The third coming? :D
Him over djourou any day of the week, month or year mate.
You must’ve been watching the Arsenal in Argentina last season and have Djourou mixed up with one of their players
BANDWAGON FAN, Wake the hell up!
Seriously dude, I am ashamed to have to consider you a fellow Gooner.
Lack of knowledge from both. I my friend am a true gooner, and can recognise when someone is shit.
Djourou is our worst defender – FACT. Watch bolton away, stoke away (even though there are plenty more examples)
ALWAYS loses his man from a set peice, he let paul robinson outpace him and out jump him – infact, djourou didn’t even jump. He. Doesn’t. Jump. A reason why he’s only scored one goal. He shys away from everything instead of getting stuck in. Gave away a crucial penalty v bolton aswell and then puts his hands up as if he’s innocent. He.is.shit. Like it or lump it, its the truth.
The Rock knows best.
Ease up Rock, Sturridge dived!
why doesn’t he retire when no club wants him
Have some respect, he won us trophies. If you’re talking useless clowns look no further than Koscielny, Squillaci, Gibbs and Djourou. In his pomp, Campbell was better than all that trash lumped together.
im starting to get the feeling that he is broke… and needs to keep playing to keep the lights on. If i were 36 and made the kind of money i know he has made… and i keep getting worse with each passing year the normal rational is to hang the boots up. On the other hand though he might be suffering from an alpha male complex after being on top for so long it might be hard to let go. Either way i think he should hang it up and not tarnish the way he would be remembered. Lets not jump into conclusions though he is just training with us thats all…. I think lol.
To the guy who said he thinks Sol is broke – I think you know very little about Sol. He is one of the smartest business heads in football. From the day he left Spurs on a free that guy has been loaded – already b then he was making over 100K per week in salary and bonuses, which was a huge amount in that time. And by the time he left Arsenal was estimated to be worth over 20 million pounds, net worth that is.
Since then he has on top of all that married the heiress to a huge property development family, in fact the same family that recently did a deal with Arsneal.
So no, Sol doesnt need any money. He plays this game for the love of the game and because he can earn an honest living doing what he loves. if only nasri and Fabregas could take some notes.
if wenger signs him he will proably state that he is a new player
CB, English, tall, good in the air and on set pieces, experienced in the PL. Isn’t this the signing everyone’s been calling for all summer?
Da best 4 him in arsenal is to put on the no.5 jersey & cheer up vameleen. That pig shd go to divion 4.
He’s just training lads calm down! Pires done it last year,Wenger loves his ex players and wud let them all train if they wanted…he even let beckham come
What a player he was eh
dudes please!
its just arsene’s kindness in helping out ex players. this 36 years old happened to be member of the most successful arsenal defence under arsene wenger.
btw, even at 36 i will have him over squillaci any day.
why is city still keeping vieira? to provide leadership and keep hot young players in line with advices. arsenal young defenders can also learn a thing or 2 from sol campbell.
arsenal could sign just for his influence in the dressing room, training with djourou and koscielny.
maybe even a fulltime defensive coach
This should have like A BILLION likes.
A defensive coach is what we need the most, even more so than a new CB.
I would be happy with the existing CBs and Sol as defensive coach.
Sadly Wenger believes he’s a good defensive coach.
you´re spot on there sam
RashonWenger>
“m starting to get the feeling that he is broke… and needs to keep playing to keep the lights on. If i were 36 and made the kind of money i know he has made… and i keep getting worse with each passing year the normal rational is to hang the boots up.”
I don’t agree at all. I don’t think he’s broke, although I have no real knowledge – I just figure we’d have heard about it if he’d somehow lost all that money.
On top of that, why shouldn’t he want to go on playing? I’d guess pretty much everyone here would kill for the chance just to come on as a sub for ten minutes in a single Premier League match, or to play a few games in the Championship. Why shouldn’t Sol still be keen to do so as well? If his body can handle the workload without long-term problems, why shouldn’t he keep playing?
I like to see players who like to keep on playing – it shows they love the game. I suspect a lot of the guys who decide to make a big exit and go out on a high note actually regret it later, and wish they’d played a bit more.
Why on earth shouldn’t he come back and train? He’s not being paid for goodness sake. And having him around can’t but help the young players. No need at all for disrespectful comments.
he should drop down a level or go to scotland or something.
He’s 36, hardly a ‘young gun’. ;P
Sol is a legend for Arsenal, not just for winning and being part of one of the greatest teams in PL history but also for leaving the scum to come to us. big up Sol
Sol should join New York Red Bulls in America, that would be awesome.
New York have to good center backs in Rafael Marguez and Tim Ream who both are all stars. Funny statistic tho…. Both all stars play side by side and are pretty much equivalent in MLS play but Marquez makes 4.5 million dollars a year and Tim Ream makes a whopping 55 thousand a year lol. I know store managers that make more than Ream.
I’d love to see him and Vieira come in as coaches, they might add that bit of steel that the team has been lacking. And for a young player at the club you can hardly get two better role models than Vieira and Campbell.
and bergkamp as a striker coach would make an ideal coaching staff
Coaching doesn’t really work like that tho. The best players do not necessarily mean he will be the best coach and being a bad player doesn’t mean you will be a bad coach.
Maradona – crappy coach
Arsene Wenger, Jose Mourinho, Andre Villas Boas – Great coaches, bad players
I agree Shane. The logic seems to be that we won things when they were players at Arsenal, so we’ll win things again if we bring them in as coaches. But playing and coaching are worlds apart. With some of them we don’t even know if they WANT to coach, let alone be any good at it. It’s just being assumed that they’d be interested.
Sol Campbel is a player who came 4rm our arch rivals tot“harm” nd he has been a gunners faithful uptil now. So I dnt care if he trains wit us wen he bcoms 50yrs old bt ders no contract 4 him dis tym. I luv u sol.
Welcome back. Him training or being our our young players can only help. People that tell athletes to retire are funny. It is their job. They should keep playing however long they want and how ever long a team whats to pay them. Anyone that claims that it jeopardizing their legacy or anything like that are ridiculous. If you judge a player on what they did at 36 years old in a lower league then you have issues. Like any of you would turn down a couple million pounds for a year of work.
Does anyone not think Michael Jordan is the best basketball player ever because of his spell at the wizards? Does anyone not think Pele is one of the best ever because of his spell at the Cosmos. Is Thierry Henry’s legacy going to tarnish how you feel about him because of a couple years in the MLS? Do you think George Best was less of a player because of his time at Fulham?
Welcome back Sol, gunners legend.
Campbell over Squillacci- ANY DAY.
“Campbell over Squillacci- ANY DAY.”
Christ, the stupidity – it burns, it burns.
Campbell wasn’t good enough to get games for Newcastle last season, and is a year older now. Squillaci, on the other hand, is at the very least a decent average Premier League-quality defender. He’s clearly not good enough to be first-choice for us, but then he’s not. He is equally clearly good enough to be first choice for any club in the bottom half of the table, and arguably any team up to about 5th or 6th place.
Anyone who craps on Spurs the way he did is welcome at Arsenal. The fact that he went on to become a double winner makes him a legend in my book and well worth a place at the training ground.
But Sol over Squillaci? not anymore, Squillaci had quite a few poor games last season, however, i still believe that he could settle in this season as our 4th, 5th or even 6th choice CB. He is defo behind TV and Kos, but if JD continues to wobble and Bartley goes on loan who knows, he could be our 3rd choice, that scares me and is why we must sign Mertesacker or Vertonghen or Samba or Cahill or Subotic or Hummels or Sakho….you see there are so many options one or even better 2 of them would be fantastic along with Parker, i would even take Vieira on as a player coach for the DM role and tell him not to run around just sit in front of the back 4.
he should join the coaching staff
chillout people, squillaci is a calamity.
the way he was treated doesnt mean anything. vela hardly got a game at westbrom now still in arsenal shirt.
you people are scared arsene will announce him as our new signing.LOL!!! that won’t happen.
whatever arsene has in mind for him, welcome back legend. you can use colney facilities to keep fit. i didnt see anyone complaining when henri was there.
yes sol is better than squillaci, the last 10 minutes on the pitch especially when our young defenders get exausted and start commiting silly mistakes is better than chicken squillaci playing 90 minutes in a arsenal shirt.
I think we can safely say that Sol is not! a Young Gun anymore
Donno what kind of fan base we have if they dont respect Campbell.You cant judge 36 old legend from his last season, or forget his past. Disgrace
BIG UP SOL CAMPBELL UNBEATEN SEASON, ARSENAL DOUBLE WINNER.
This is what is a bit annoying to me. I am a big fan of Wenger but some things I just don’t get.
He said this about whether he thought the board would back him on keeping Nasri. Now I don’t know Wenger’s underlining plan so I am just commenting on what he said.
“I think so, I believe that is no problem. It is a technical decision. On one hand people say I don’t spend enough and when I spend people say I spend too much. It’s very difficult to find the right medium.”
For one, we don’t want you to be stupid about it. We want you to spend right to find the right quality pieces that we need but that does not mean we want to lose out on 25 million pounds for a player that can leave for free in one year. That would just be stupid.
Secondly, to me in his comments it sounds like we have money so if we can afford to let a 25 million pound player walk away for free then why can we not afford to challenge for 25 million pound players? It seems like an ass backwards way of thinking.
Wenger might have a plan for all this but his comments are a bit strange and I surely hope he would not lose Nasri for free.
Maybe Wenger feels that if we can keep Fabregas for another year and keep Nasri for another year as well, we will win a trophy and that would mean it would be easier to re-sign Nasri as we would have won something and the club would gain more barganing power that way. I don’t know…I really don’t think we will win anything this year because the attitude will be the same and nobody in our first 11 has won anything of any significance I don’t think. So in the end I do think Nasri will leave on a free. We will be this season, like we always are but ultimately I think we might fall a little short again. I hope I am wrong and I do see the talent that this squad undoubtedly posesses, but I just don’t know if we will have the fortunate bounces with injuries and fatigue and so-on. IF we keep all of our prominant players healthy for the balance of the season then, yes, I can see us winning the league, but when was the last time all fo our prominant players were healthy for most of, or an entire year??? See what I mean???
I think its very contradictory to say that being a good player does not mean he can be a good coach and in the same breath say his being around the young players only helps…. if you cant teach you cant coach its dat simple. so his being around the young players is not guaranteed to teach them anything if you are out of the premier league caliber skill level. so either way thats quite silly. just thought i should point that out. now if we are talking about work ethic or character… then yes i would agree with you. Finally if you believe that he can rub off on the players then he has some capacity to coach maybe not as good as the best of them.
First of no offense but read properly before you comment mate. I did not say being a good player does not mean you can be a good coach. I just said it does not guarantee you will be a good coach. Practicing with our youngsters and giving some little advice on being a professional or just a professionals work rate around young players can help but that does not mean he will necessarily become a great coach.
You obviously got back on track towards the end of your comment mate.
also people that tell people how to think are really bonkers. Not everyone is money hungry…. so the players that retire because they only want to play at the top level are stupid eh? because they passed on a million a year at a lower tier. Its clear some people are motivated by money while some are motivated by the competition as it is with all level of competition. I am of the opinion that if i’m not good to play at the level i want to play i would retire…. some of us think otherwise. Last time i checked we just read these blogs and you are not a professional player so how do you presume to be an expert in athlete psychology? people that take this stuff too seriously should get a life. I believe that Sol’s reputation is intact but i would rather see him retire on top than on the bench of a division one or championship team. This is a fan’s perspective. Whatever Sol does is what he does. But since you know so much about how athletes are wired enlighten us.
No, I am saying it is up to the athlete. You are “in the same breathe” contradicting your whole argument by having an opinion on what athletes should do. I am just saying let them do what they want. If a player wants to play until he is 50 and feed his family then who are we to judge. If a player wants to retire because he only wants to play at the highest level like Zidane then who are we to judge. It is their choice not ours.
By the way, it is not psychology by just saying football is a players job and pays their bills lol. I don’t think there was one part of my comment that had anything to do with psychology.
He did a fantastic job when he came in a couple of years ago just think we could’ve had him instead of Squillaci last season! :(
Ignasi Miquel isn’t in the spain u20 world cup squad checked a few times, according to jeorge bird he’s in the xl squad to play hastings along with JET WATT afobe n others
Fucksakes, what’s wrong with you people? No, Campbell was not better than Squillaci last season. Nor were Franco Baresi, Tony Adams, Beckenbauer, etc etc. How hard is it to understand that Sol is feckin’ past-it? He was a top class player for us, but that was half a decade ago. Get over him, please.
Wenger is an idiot.
He now says we “are not weak defensively”. What a disgrace. I’ve seriously had enough of him now.
And we obviously don’t need the money as we can afford to let nasri go for free next year. Enough is enough now.
Wenger out
The truth is that most people associate the center backs as being the only part of defense which I don’t know how to put this but that is simply stupid. Its a team game and if people can’t understand that our style often leaves the center backs hung out to dry then what can you say. I could go into massive detail again but frankly it takes to long to type and the people that haven’t gotten it yet will never understand.
Koscielny, Vermaelen, Djurou and Song are a quality center backs and all better then Cahill.
angry fan : the most sucessful manager in our history. the only manager of any team in a hundred years to go the whole season unbeaten and you think hes an idiot truly purely stupid or maybe just a spud
@shane. Mate i cant have a disagreement with you without being labelled as not able to read or being halfway retarded. Yes your comment made it seem like no player would pass up money to play for even a smaller team and i stated that players are built differently maybe psychology is not the word. some treasure the competition and not the money. Lick your chops and walk away because thats clearly a fact. just as its a fact that its their job and they can keep playing if they want for the money some of them play for the competition and want to play at the highest level mate. So how is that a contradiction? Secondly all this talk about giving professional advice…. he had his first go around and ample opportunity to give professional advice then. So i dont think he all of a sudden breathes new life with a fresh bag of tips for the players. so that point is null and void. if you “read carefully” you would understand that in that paragraph the point i was trying to make is that every player is a coach to a varying degree because they have a wealth of information and experience so it is rather contradictory to say that they can help players for certain but may not be able to coach or can coach as the case maybe…. when helping players and coaching are the same thing. whether you are teaching them to be professionals or work rate…. that is a coaches job so its one and the same. And stop pretending to know what people are thinking when they make posts on this blog my initial comment was supposed to be an attempt at side pan humor.
If you followed all the comments leading up to my comment, you would understand what my point was. My point was simply that is should be the players decision. In context to the comments, I was simply presenting the side of the fact that it is their job so people that pretend to be high and mighty over them are not right. Whether the player wants to retire like Zidane or play into their 40s, it has nothing to do with us especially if they are not even playing for our club. People pretending like they would turn down a couple million pounds for 1 year of work/ playing a game is absurd. People are just so quick to tell these guys what to do when given the same opportunity, most of us including me would not turn it down.
Cheers mate and anytime I feel I comment was not kept in context of the conversation or paints another picture of what my point is, I will call them out on it. I give everyone on here at least enough respect to properly read all their comments so I stay with the conversation properly.
PS, you are following the conversation so little that you have failed to understand that we agree lol.
its very naive to believe arsene all of people will bring 2 defenders to replace djourou and koscielny coz whoever comes in has to adapt to arsenal style of play. arsenal is an academy to develop players and help them progress. they did well in their first full season in top flight without cover.now with vermaelen fit the arsene we know wouldn’t spend 17 millions on a defender. the most believable story i read today is we are linked with 5 millions danish defender mathias jorgensen. if its true then thats type of arsene deal, someone cheap who’ll take some times to adapt if he makes sudden impact its a bonus.
personally i wish we could buy a new defender just to make sure we maintain the challenge throughout the season and cope with injuries and tiredness but i dont expect arsene to spend more than 10 millions.
again i wouldnt complain if he spend on this danish dude, he’s tall, strong and has champions league experience.
here is the story
http://www.footybunker.com/arsenals-next-centre-back-will-be-21-year-old-dane/7673
RashonWenger>
I’m not saying you can’t read, but… I can’t see that you and Shane are disagreeing about anything – if anything, there was one slight misunderstanding, you agree with each other.
Sam>
I hate to use the phrase, but in many senses we were short one CB last year due to TV’s injury, so if he genuinely is fit again, it will be ‘like a new signing’ in terms of increasing our defensive depth.
I’d much rather see an attacking player like Mata come in for around £20 million than get some overpriced EPL centre-back. Personally, I don’t see a single defender in the league who’s not already at one of our rivals and who’d be a significant improvement (or any improvement at all) over our first-choices.
For all the rubbish the pundits come out with, Arsenal’s defence was actually pretty good last season. We’re an attacking side, so we’re never going to be quite as secure at the back as a Mourinho team (for example), but despite that we had one of the best defences in the league, statistically, until things fell apart. Hell, we kept Barca from scoring better than almost any other team as long as we had 11 men on the pitch.
I reckon you can never stop the fluke/lucky goals, and you can’t stop the goals that the ref hands the other team. As long as you score at least three goals in every game, though, that won’t matter very often.
Clichy was a bit of a liability last season, and Gibbs also looked shaky.. We need a proper left back! If we don’t get a solid LB, will TV5 be put there? Then we need a covering CB.. And don’t get me started on Squillaci..
thats what i always believe, our problem is in attack more than defence. we cannot buy a player just to be able to stop stoke scoring against us. how about playing to outscoring them by 5 goals. we used to do that, even if they manage to score 2 dodgy ruby style goals against us we still get away with 3 points.
barcelona’s tallest player is pique the rest of them are short, even his defensive partner puyol is 5’10. they dont care if the opposition team have big players. they just outplay and outscore them. arsenal should start doing the same.
the media writing in the summer that samba will win us the league because he’s big, that was actually the joke of the year. we can sign as a good addition to the team, i dont mind that.
for me, arsenal really need a goal machine. i dont know if walcott will start in the middle this year. if not we really need to buy one.
Barca have a squad designed to play in La Liga and the Champions League. They don’t need that many tall players because the opposition they come up against regularly do not often employ the type of physically-orientated tactics that the teams we face on a regular basis in the Premiership often utilise. If Barca played in the Premiership, you can be assured that they would have a few more six footers in the squad and the likes of Yaya Toure would not be allowed to leave.
To all those who think Wenger is wrong when he says we are not weak defensively – remember that English is still not his first language, and it is not like him to criticize his players (usually).
I think he’s saying that it really doesn’t matter much if we get better defenders. UNLESS he changes our style of play to more counter-attacking and less pressing, or unless our attack is more efficient, our defense is going to be caught out and exposed.
It doesn’t mean the defenders are crap. After keeping possession for long periods, these MFs and FWs miss sitters and easy chances. No efficiency. Wenger wants a high defensive line. He wants to use the offside trap. He wants to keep the ball and keep it in the opponent’s half.
This only works if we are scoring more goals. See Barca. Arsenal’s finishing is not good enough for the style of play Arsene wants. Lay off the defenders. Blame the ones who aren’t taking their chances in front of goal.
***Set-piece defending needs to improve***. I’ll give you that. Again, this is all on Wenger. Every year he says “we” are working on defending set-pieces. How long, Arsene? Fix it and do it now!!! It’s so annoying. Spend more time on this and less time doing the tiki taka Barca stuff. Or tell the Scam-Hacks (the guy is lethal in the air though)
Arsene, tell that tall North African and all those wasters in attack to score more goals. I can’t believe these guys pass the ball when they should be hitting the back of the net.
Why should he bother training with us if he isnt going to play, yes he was good before but its a bit obvious that no club wants him. I agree with all the others, hes had a good career but he should hang up his boots now while he still has good memories on the game :)
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