Arsene Wenger says Joel Campbell remains in his plans for the season, but underlined that he can’t guarantee the happiness of every player in his squad.
Reports emerged this week that the Costa Rican international is pretty miffed at his lack of playing time since returning to Arsenal from three successive loan spells and is eager to quit the Emirates in search of more football.
Confronted about the speculation ahead of the Gunners game with Swansea City on Sunday, the boss insisted that the 22-year-old still has a future in N5.
“Yes, of course [he’s in my plans].
“You should ask him that question [whether he is happy]. I cannot guarantee the personal happiness of every person. I try to make everybody happy.
“I personally love Joel Campbell and have big respect for him, and I wish every day that he’s happy from morning to evening, but we all have to deal with our own problems.”
The boss has a history of putting up a supportive front when quizzed on the specifics of his relationship with individual players, so we’d suggest the above comments be taken with a pinch of salt.
The lack of game time suggests that Campbell is, at the moment at least, way down the wide-attacking position pecking order with the likes of Lukas Podolski, Alexis Sanchez, Santi Cazorla, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Theo Walcott and Tomas Rosicky all standing in his way.
If those players stay fit it’s hard to see him getting much more football this season – he’s not even been on the bench recently at a time when we’ve not exactly been filling the subs with defenders – so you can’t help but think a loan in January might be best for both parties.
I don’t like being 16th in the league so can someone retire Wenger and give me a “new challenge”?
It helps your case if you can spell your own surname correctly….
Klopp
the boss is definitely in a feisty mood.
Everything he says now is meaningless to me. Cannot wait to get the next 3 years over with
Haha go watch those f’ckin Chelsea rentboys then
Nope. Ive been watching since 79, so I can wait a few more years until he is gone
Since ’79 you say?
Well, tell us how you felt when we finished 10th in the league in 82/3 and 92/3?
And 12th in 94/5?
Please do tell, I’d love to know.
79, so like me, you remember the dark days before AW. The mid table (or worse) embarrassment and tedious games away at places like Ipswich where a goal was the only upside. Admittedly there were also real high points but only occasionally with football to be proud of.
He’s obviously nostalgic for the days of boring, boring Arsenal
Wengersnosehair- the irony here is that the only boring boring Arsenal years I can recall as a supporter are the last 7 where we have become so predictable– failure to strengthen the squad properly in summer. followed by a raft of injuries, followed by a few humiliationsfollowed by the inevitable annual capitulation. Fourth place and CL second round before losing at home and a ‘gutsy’ meaningless away draw or win.
You haven’t answered my first comment. Try again.
Wengersnosehair, how I felt 20 and 30 years ago is totally irrelevant. Everything, including myself has changed a lot since. Therefore I think it is a stupid question and not worth answering.
If you don’t remember the real ‘boring boring arsenal’ then you’re a liar, you weren’t a supporter since 79. I was a travelling supporter in the late 70’s and all the 80’s (until family commitments reduced the away travel dramatically) and for most games the best part was the supporters. The quality on the pitch has been up and down like our league position, but there were some real poor performances where ‘clogging it long’ was our game-plan and it failed. We rarely reach those highs in recent years but don’t consistently have the lows we had then. As you… Read more »
Andy Mack, you dont get it. Unlike you, supporting Arsenal in the 80’s and 90’s was not boring for me. Dont call me a liar again you retard
You see I support Arsenal FC- not Arsene FC
We are all arsenal fans and want arsenal to do well. Some of us think arsene Wenger is not the right man to lead the club forward. Personally i think Wenger is a great manager and a terrible and infuriating one at the same time. If it was up to me this would be his last year, then i would bring in Ancelotti, Pep or Mancini. He’s not going to be sacked so we have to wait another 2 1/2 years for his tenure to come to an end. I don’t think he can lead us to the title again… Read more »
The guy seems a good lad and a decent footballer. But I think there is a reason Arsene is not using him. Personally would love to see him shine for us, but if a move away to another club is in his best interest, I wish him well.
From what we have seen for floppy Joel in CONCACAF it is hoghly likely he doesn’t understand what it takes to wear the shirt…. let alone play in front of Poldi.
From what we’ve seen from him he would have made more effort than Podolski did stopping that cross for the third goal. Though if we had a proper defense you would almost encourage a player cross from that position as it’s very difficult to score from.
Poldi isn’t competing against Joel.
JC is RW and possibly CF whilst Poldi is LW and possibly CF.
He should take Podolski’s minutes…
Two people are feeling grumpy and lacking in humour I see
Don’t feel bad, I mean, it needs to be funny for there to be humour involved.
Sorry we could not see you doing the funny dance while you post the comment!!!
keep joel sell podolski
He’s a decent player who has a knack for killing teams from manchester…I’d like to see him blossom with us..
I’d play alexis centraly and give campbell cazorla’s game time… easy as that
Who’s going to be the creative force in the team then? Mesut is out you want santi benched. it’d be alexis doing everything which to be fair is the case right now
Seems like a good player but don’t think we’ll be seeing him around in an Arsenal shirt for long. I would’ve preferred if Arséne would’ve sold him post-WC. Would’ve probably gotten a decent price. Not even making it to the bench in the presence of a fit Sanogo must be frustrating. Not taking anything away from Sanogo here, but considering the kind of WC he had and his performance in Greece it must be pretty frustrating.
Can’t believe he’s not getting enough game time, he was one of the best players in the world cup,
side note – I couldn’t find an appropriate post to rant on this but – I’m ashamed the way so called arsenal fans bashed Nacho Monreal on #askmonreal. how pathetic is that? could be trolls, but the majority were legit AFC fans. A. he’s actually trying to bail our ass for not buying a defender B. he tries his best in a position he states he is not comfortable in C. he’s a fantastic LB in my opinion – keeps things tidy/neat/defends well and has the edge over gibbs in delivering a cross/final ball D. GROW A PAIR OF F******… Read more »
@tdotgoonah. Couldn’t agree more regarding those idiots comments about Monreal. The player himself admitted he had never played at CB before the Charity Shield game.
It reminds me of when Olly G was played to exhaustion and his performances naturally dropped last season. It is so wrong for fans to turn on players because the manager has neglected his squad and thrown the player(s) to the wolves.
Hear, hear!
And the same for #AskArteta, absolutely disgraceful.
It’s such a shame we crashed out of the League Cup so early as this would have given Campbell and a few others some valuable game time. I like the lad but there’s so much quality ahead of him that he needs to be patient. Hopefully we’ll start to see him on the bench some more because sub appearances are all I can see him getting in the immediate future
I think Podolski and Campbell will both leave in search for 1st team football next season. We have the 25 man squad rule which Oxlade and Sanogo need to be registered for next season so not sure we’ll buy another attacking midfielder and Gnabry will be involved a lot more which I am happy with cos he looks quality. Walcott Ox Ozil Santi Alexis Gnabry are very good options in those 3 positions behind the striker which if you look at other teams, ours is better in quality and numbers in that position
How about not letting go of campbell? I dont think any of the others can play comfortably on the left wing and actually stay wide when needed. Campbell can add that width.
Campbell is RW. He can cover left and play CF against the right opposition, but he’s not particularly strong LW.
Agree with you Gooner10. Can’t wait to see more of Gnabry.
I see this evolving into a Pogba-Manure type thing in the future for us…
But that’s none of my business
I bet Wenger can guarantee Sanogo’s happiness tough. 😛
Seriously though, for the blog writer, also remember Campbell is originally a striker, not just a wide forward. Should he should have more of a chance now we apparently play with 2 strikers.
He’s not really a PL CF but could easily play 2nd striker. He may gain the experience to become a real CF but not yet. Sanogo is raw but he’s physically good (Ideal even) for a PL CF. In a few years time Sanogo and Campbell could well be our best 2 strikers, but neither if them are there yet. If it wasn’t for the ‘in game’ injuries early in the season, I think JC would have had much more game time but when the RB or MF gets injured then it changes the option for the other 2 subs.… Read more »
He has to prove the boss wrong during training session and the occasional 10 minutes he gets. That’s how tough it is to break into a team.
Sanogo didn’t get that, he got a start against Bayern Munich send is still trying to prove himself.
Because of injuries Sanogo was the best option for that particular game plan.
If JC had been with us then, he may have got a game instead (unlikely but possible).
I thought campbell had a 1 year contract left last summer. Wouldn’t make sense to send him out on a loan if he doesn’t sign a new contract. And I don’t see him signing the way things are going for him now.
Campbell dude thinks too much of himself, not good enough, lacking in accuracy, losses possession quite a bit, hardly ever scores, passing accuracy rather low, not a good defender, has pace but also does a to a lot of trotting about, just ain’t Big Four material, ah and one good performance at the World Cup vs a lame Uruguay team (minus Suarez in the attack and a slow, plodding Diego Lugano in the back) does not qualify as a great showing.
Campbell is a right winger, he rarely plays elsewhere, so he isn’t really competition for Podolski (or Sanogo, for that matter). Even if he was, Poldi has a much better scoring record. Rosicky is near the end of his career, and Cazorla is nearly 30, so I don’t see them as competition. Even so, if I’m honest, I can’t really see a place for Campbell, unless he’s happy to play only when we have an injury crisis. At RW, Walcott, Sanchez, The Ox and Gnabry are all ahead of him. That’s two players at their peak, and two others younger… Read more »
Wenger doesn’t know how to rotate his squad. if not, campbell and poldi should be getting game time,.
Then again, he just might not be that impressive in training.
When you’ve actually got a team playing as a team, then you start to rotate and bring others into the team. We haven’t got that fluency yet but when it happens, there’ll be much more rotation and many more supporters moaning about changing a winning team.
It’s pointless to play the same 11-14 players every 3 days and run them into the ground as well. It’s also upon the manager to rotate sensibly without diminishing the quality the team has. We definitely have enough quality on the bench and those unused like Campbell to reach their form with proper game time. When you only give them playing time when a starter gets injured is ridiculous. Wenger has been totally stuck to a grp of players lately. And we can clearly see players like AOC being ignored when Walcott used to be fit. And now we play… Read more »
Interesting article from Keown: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2823856/MARTIN-KEOWN-FIVE-centre-backs-good-form-entire-Premier-League.html “At the moment I can only really think of five defenders in the Premier League who are in good form, and even they are often dependent on their team-mates in front of them. “…They [Cahill and Terry] make a formidable pair and are a large part of Chelsea’s success this season. But even they can be troubled if they don’t get the proper amount of midfield protection. Crystal Palace were able to isolate them and when they did, Fraizer Campbell went past Cahill – the most consistent defender in the league – as if he… Read more »
Many of you won’t agree with me but look at this…. Walcott has been out for nine months and get straight into squad Campbell has been fit has played well every time he has come on except for the game he started against Southampton… I know we can all say walcott as a higher value but it just goes to show that Wenger has his favorites for how long now has Ramsey been out of form yet he starts every game same with ozil before he got injured.. Now last match sanogo was name on the bench where was Campbell… Read more »
disagree wiht a lot of comments here. campbell is a very good player. he showed it in cl last year at olympiakos with a very good coach who trusted him ( Michel , ex Real playmaker ). He hada brilliant world cup, contrary to what I have read here and there. He hold his own in a very tough group. Fans do really think we have forwards who are superior to Campbell? Are you serious. let’s get back to reality : Poldi has played too much too young, he is happay go lucky bench warmer for us and Germany for… Read more »
joel escape from wengerism and save your career kid! you proved on the biggest stage on planet football your worth! aw wanted to use him in an exchange +money for a dm it didn’t work out. like someone said it’s pogba-man ure situation type. joel is way better than a happy go lucky bench warmer german guy. Poldi has been a subsitute for the last 4 years for us and for Germany, please fans wake up HAS PLAYED TOO MUCH TOO YOUNG; Santi and Mozart are not forwards they are classical playmakers. Only Arsene crazy coaching make fans thinks they… Read more »
We’ve got far bigger issues than a moaning forward who scored a couple of goals in Greece.
JC hasn’t moaned but I can understand if he does because he hasn’t been given the chance prove himself.