Arsene Wenger has admitted Joel Campbell wanted to leave the club this summer due to the lack of first team opportunities.
On his various loan spells at the likes of Olympiacos, Villarreal, and Real Betis, he had played regular first team football, but at Arsenal his role was peripheral, at best.
However, given a chance to showcase his talent on Saturday, the 23 year old capped his first Premier League start with a goal, and drew praise from his manager.
“I think he wanted to go because he didn’t play,” said Wenger. “You can understand and as well because he didn’t play at all,” he said. “Sometimes people want you to buy more and more players but after a while you have to look at your own players.
“I didn’t let him go because I felt he is a guy who has the quality and he is still young and is a team-worker. He wanted to go because he wasn’t playing. But I didn’t let him go because in our job, all you can do is be ready and when you get your chance, take it and I think he did.”
Wenger also praised the character of the Costa Rican, showing the patience to wait for his opportunity in the first team in a game that actually mattered.
“He comes from Costa Rica, to get out of there and to come to England and to go different leagues and survive, you need some character and he has shown that again today.”
In fairness he’s only playing because we have a spate of injuries. He scored, great – and I’d like him to score again against Bayern. The reality is closer to Blog’s assessment after the COC game: “he doesn’t seem to be too good at football”. I wish him all the best in another league come January or June.
That being said, I’ll be cheering him on – and welcome his defensive awareness when we have 30-40% possession against Pep’s boys.
Yea of course, the exactly same thing happened with Le Coq. The rest is history.
And Song and Ramsay and Monreal. Joel Campbell is obviously not a bad footballer, he is a technical, fast player who can only be judged in the first team in a critical match – when he got his first chance he done well. Sub appearances, Dead rubbers and COC matches do not tell us the real worth of a player. Coquelin was still considered as a stop gap until Man City when he strangled the life out of the much vaunted best midfield in the league as well as playing an important role in the creativity of the team –… Read more »
There’s quite a significant difference between Joel Campbell and Coq and players like Song, Ramsey and Monreal though. Wenger always seemed to have faith in Ramsey and Song especially, but also Monreal despite a lot of people writing them off. I don’t think even Wenger sees Campbell having a long term future at the club, but I don’t think he envisaged Coquelin establishing himself as a vital member of the first eleven either. It’s up to Joel to prove people wrong like Coq has done, but unfortunately for him competition is far tougher on right wing than at DM. I… Read more »
And yet he keeps him tethered to the club. He must have some long term designs on campbell (and even wellington silva )- he could have cut his losses and even cashed in in the last 3 windows when Cambells stock was high. Monreal was bought as back up to injury prone gibbs not sure it was ever envisaged that he would be actually improving as a player approaching 30. Song was never a long term plan – he was largely crap but struck up a great partnership with RVP that allowed him for 2 seasons to be undroppable. Ramsay… Read more »
The manager will not have decided yet if Joel has or has not got a long term future with the club, as he hasn’t played enough! He may make that decision about a 29/30 year old but Joel is still developing.
I don’t understand why people think Monreal was some unknown average player that suddenly improved. He was a top consistent player for Malaga in his (albeit short) time there and was highly rated. The reason he was poor at first was cause he never really got a consistent run in the team. He would suddenly be thrown in when Gibbs got injured and then be taken out when Gibbs came back irrelevant of how he was performing. Sometimes you have players that will immediately take their chance whenever it’s given to them, sometimes players need a continuous run and not… Read more »
Is it just me or has everyone forgotten that the reason he was on loan in the first place (just like Wellington silva for that matter) was due to work permit issues for the first 3 or so years? He wasn’t sent on loan because of a lack of talent, our hands were tied in the situation. He then had to return to an already established team with plenty of experienced players in his position. Ofcourse he’s going to have to work to get into the managers plans and force the issue to get up the pecking order. the problem… Read more »
…when he couldn’t.
Think he’s quality and has done it in big games for his teams and himself personally. World Cup , champions league, Arsenal debut. Plenty of serie a. Clubs where sniffing after him after the World Cup. playing alongside better players will raise him up even better now he is alongside ozil, Santi alexis…
Arise JC, do a Coq.
I believe in you son.
Give him a proper chance. We don’t want to do another Carlos Vela.
Vela didn’t seem to take any of his chances with us or on loan from us.
He’s clearly a talented player but I’m not convinced he’s suitable for the PL.
I’m thrilled He stayed….. I’m hoping He gets more games under his belt, apparently the kick on the butt his form would have on Chambo is only a good thing… Ramsey has a serious fight on his hand if hopefully his form continues…. Which is definitely a good thing……! unto bayern now and I really feel Campbell would be their bogey player. can’t wait……coyg!
p.s……I fucking love bellerin #nohomo
So he’s shown that he’s not the deadwood that many idiots said he was, although equally you can’t judge him on this game alone so it’s wrong to get carried away. The manager kept him for a reason and a run of games will show if he’s exceeds, meets or underachieves.
Only a fuck-wit makes a firm decision about a player before he’s got sufficient playing time to gain fitness and an ‘in game’ understanding of (and with) the players around him.
Word my friend. Fans these days are too quick to judge, just like the ones who wanted Cesc over özil.
Thankfully our manager is wenger and not us, that’s why our youth players who seem to be rubbish aren loaned and not sold like the deadwood they were deemed by many.
I beg to differ on Benik Afobe’s case.. I still feel he should have been kept and not sold.. He was much better than Chuba Akpom..
A good work ethic has gone a long way into establishing players less talented than our Campbell as stars. I see no reason why the same couldn’t happen to him. Hard work should never be underestimated.
Sorry, I’m still busy gushing over Hectors 60 yard sprint and saving tackle on Gomis. The boy is truly supernatural!
I think I rewound that play 20 times, it was so impressive!
Campbell’s good game goes to show how much easier it is to play in a settled team in a competitive game that everyone is up for than in a makeshift second string side in a game that has clearly been labeled ‘unimportant.’ I strongly feel this kind of performance could equally have come from the likes of Chambers, Gibbs or Arteta, and it shows we have a great squad. I’ll be really interested to see how Wenger manages the squad if it ever is mostly healthy. Somehow, I remain unconvinced by his ability to keep 16-18 Champions League quality players… Read more »
We’ve seen with many teams that rotation only works well with confident teams. When a team is winning then you can change one player every game, possibly 2 occasionally, as shown by the 49’ers. More than that breaks the ‘rhythm’ of the team. It’s rare we are in a position to make voluntary changes to a winning team as we’re usually forced into injury changes by the PMGO and without knowing the form and fitness of the entire squad, it’s impossible to know if the manager has missed any possible rotation options.
I honestly think that my hart won’t handle another Coq – Bellerin case. That would be exciting.
He is still far from Ramsey’s level. If he stays on, I think he might be able to carve out a niche as a useful squad player.
He will have real competition with Welbeck regarding that slot.
I thought he looked technically better than Ramsey, and better at defending than the Ox and Walcott. Also being able to cut in and shoot with his left foot is a real goal threat and adds an extra dimension to the attack. He does need to improve his decision making and get more in tune with the team, but that will come with more games. Overall a real prospect and better than 7th choice for the right side of the attack.
I think he will eventually be a better option on the right than Ramsey because he’s good defensively and always a threat going foward. With Ox looking a bit stagnant in his progression I feel Campbell has got a massive chance to cement this position.
Joel bravo son
Opportunity knocked
Took it
At the end of the day Ramsey is still a central midfielder. I read from somewhere Wenger likes to play them on the wing to teach them how to operate in limited space. The position on the right is his welbecks and the ox to compete for. On a brighter note at least we have the personnel to be able to give Sanchez a breather once in a while
I think it’s not just that Wenger likes to play central midfielders on the wing for their development though. He also seems to like to play a creative central midfielder on one of the wings for tactical purposes, to add creativity to the team and overload the midfield (or something like that, anyway). So it may well be that no matter how well our wingers and wide forwards do, Wenger will still stick a central midfielder out on one of the wings in many games.
Shame Wellington it’s as committed as this lad, always liked the kid. Let’s smash Munich up
What makes you think Wellington isn’t as committed?
We don’t know anywhere near enough about his situation to know !
Hi arseblog, I feel like Ozil and Sanchez particularly, aren’t very kin on passing the ball to Campbell, even the assist wasn’t meant for him. Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think the two combined more than 7 passes in 90 minutes to him. This made him desperate to take every chance he got for himself and frustrated the two back in return when he took shots instead of passing. Campbell was rightly unapologetic IMO. The amount of players who came to celebrate with him (Giroud, Santi, Bellerin) after he scored his first! goal ever was also indicatively… Read more »
It’s probably more about not knowing his game yet…. probably.
I also noticed something similar but I’m going to give the benefit of the doubt to ozil given the situation. Early in the match I felt that maybe the team were avoiding putting that additional pressure on him by making everything go through his side(?) having said that, I did notice ozil and Sanchez possibly trying to pull rank (?)and demand that he subjugate himself to them. I’m glad he took some of those opportunities to shoot. Had he not, it might have come across that he doesn’t belong at that level or doesn’t have faith in his own abilities.… Read more »
Probably because Ozil is an arrogant dick.
He could still leave, he has to show something exceptional, because soon we will have players like Ramsey, Ox and Theo back. I remember Gnabry making even better impression against Swansea.
Gnarby
Gnabry!
Gnarby is at west brom bro and he currently isn’t even making the bench for failure to impress his manager
Bellerin didnt play much for Watford after Zola got sacked. Their new manager thought he wasnt good enough. And Watford were in the Championship.
GnaBRy is at West Brom, “bro”. I don’t know who this “Gnarby” character is that you’re talking about, and neither does anyone else. And failing to impress Tiny Pubis merely means that Pubis doesn’t know a skilled footballer when he sees one.
So that’s Coquelin and Joel Campbell now.
All I need is for Wellington Silva to return and do a great job and I’ll have a clean sweep against Arseblog. No doubt they’ll hater me for that. ?
As others have said – you can’t judge any player ad being good or bad until they are fit and have had a run of games. Anyone who really watches football should really know this and yet time and again, fans and the media want to ascribe genius to a player too quickly and write another off too quickly. As Gooners we should know this. We have seen many of our legends take time to settle and we have also seen many of our legends have times of being off form only to get back to their normal form. We… Read more »
The British public also seem to want a player to be ‘a genius’ or ‘complete and utter rubbish’. This is SO naïve! Based on what I’ve seen of JC so far, neither description is any where near accurate. I would suggest that his Arsenal career so far has been less than impressive, but that he played well against Swansea. I’m hopeful that Saturday’s performance is closer to what we can expect from him on a regular basis.
Not just the British public. It’s got a global fan base now and there are plenty with that view from the continents of Africa, Asia and the Americas.
If only we fans have depth knowledge of football as we really think we do! Simply,Joel played well in his 1st start in the PL;hope we’ll all see even better performances in subsequent games,simples! No need for ‘he’ll never make it as an Arsenal player’, ‘he’ll be dropped when others get fit’, ‘his grandpa’s head is bigger than my grandpa’s’. Just bloody hope he puts in a good shift next time out and the team wins! And,by the way Blogs, you’re just awesome.
I know there’s a lot of competition on the wings, but it’s time for Arsene Wenger to make Ox earn his spot. He’s been really underwhelming and he doesn’t help out defensively enough. Sanchez had an off game, but we know why he’s in the team. Players like Ox need to earn in, just like Joeljust has. I hope after the break if Ox and Joel are both healthy and Joel’s been playing well that the manager sticks with the player who’s really earned his time.
I never understood how or why people keep saying Campbell lacks the talent to make first team at Arsenal.
Clearly if you’ve seen him hold Costa Rica front line during the World Cup or his moves in the Spanish La Liga, you’ll know all he needs is trust and regularity.
I cheered his first goal and look forward to see him play liberated from now on.
Grab it while you can Joel