Arsenal youngster Joel Campbell is set to join Greek side Olympiakos on loan for the 2013/14 season despite finally getting his work permit to play in England. The striker secured the permit a little over two weeks ago, however it now seems that he will be once again away from England.

It’s a strange decision as I thought Arsene Wenger would have loved to offer Campbell the chance of English football with clubs in the championship surely willing to take the Costa Rican striker, whilst newly promoted side Crystal Palace held interest from the Premier League.

I understand that Olympiakos can offer Champions League football, which will be great for the youngster to get a taste of Europe’s greatest club competition, but realistically the Greek side probably won’t get out of the group stages and therefore he probably won’t play more than 6 games at the highest level and there’s not even a guarantee he will play in those games. The rest of his time will be spent in a very average and aggressive Greek league, which apart from playing time and experience, will give him no other benefits and so if this move is true, like the speculation currently states, then I think, player, agent and manager Arsene Wenger have made the wrong choice because I firmly believed Campbell could achieve more.

At 21 years old next season is pivotal for the youngster because people continue to question whether he actually has the ability to succeed with Arsenal. Players at this age, usually have to show whether they have the ability to make it or not and although the odd player such as Francis Coquelin may get through the majority tend to rot in the sidelines and ruin their career much like Sanchez Watt and Craig Eastmond.

Whilst waiting 2 years to secure a work permit for England, Campbell spent his time on loan in Europe with both French Ligue 1 side Lorient and Spanish side Real Betis, where he accumulated a total of 5 goals. No exactly the most impressive, but if you ask me, I’m still a firm believer in Campbell’s talent. However he will have to work extremely hard if he wants to make it in North London

3 thoughts on “Arsenal look threadbare as another squad player is allowed to go

  1. It looks like we are stuffed as no marquee player wishes to sign for us. But you were warned Mr Wenger!! What I realise now is that all the young mediocre players want to sign for Arsenal as they know they will get a playing chance. But the established top top players do not now want to come as they believe we are now doing catch up on those clubs with so much money to go out there and but a complete team! As I warned earlier, which player would want to come to a club whose sole ambition is to qualify for the CL (finish 4th)and thereafter get knocked out in the first round? It is like a catch 22 situation for us now due to the somewhat stringent measures adopted by the club over the years.
    I do not think £70M is now enough to turn our team around and make those signings that will give us a truly competitive edge and challenging for the EPL.
    It will be a sad sad time if we fail to sign anyone of note before the beginning of the season. I will then know that Arsene has lost the plot. What’s happening to Bernard’s medical today? I honestly cannot see Suarez coming to us and by the way £50M for a player which means that we have only £20M left to buy three quarters of Bernard; then what? We need at least £130M to buy 4 excellent players. Please God help us!

  2. There are plenty of players out there at around the 10M price that Arsenal could get and they are class…as an example i can mention that Malaga is super tight with money and are off loading many of their first team players, they have a really good goalkeeper that Arsenal could go for, also they have Joaquin who can play on either wing and he would cost peanuts, 5M if that and he would do a great job for us better than Gervinho….there are many players out there,its all about spotting them before the media start talking about them…Vargas could have been a great signing for us to play on the right wing but we decided not to get him on loan or buy him, well….the kid is scoring goals from 30 yards out for the Chile national team, plus he has pace and balls, he would have been around 6M …but Mr Wenger was stubborn and did not buy him…same thing happened with Sanchez, once again we tried to late and he ended up going to Barcelona

    1. Joaquin?

      I am assuming you mean the 32 year old winger?

      vargas?

      I am assuming you mean the 23 year old “kid” that couldn’t cut it at Napoli and has been shipped out to gremio “santos style”?

      sanchez?

      I am assuming you mean the player that cost Barcelona a total of £37m euros?

      well at last you mention a player that might get into our starting x1, however he will be challenging the likes of Walcott, podolski and cazorla for a place on the flanks, whereas at Barcelona he has just pedro and neymar to contend with.

      people need to consider something, even though arsenal have almost cleared out all the “deadwood” we still have a first team squad larger than Barcelona’s realistically not many teams use more than 2 players for each position our options currently look like this

      1 gk szczesney/fabianski
      1 rb sagna/jenkinson
      2 cb mertesacker/koscielny/vermaelen/miquel
      1 lb gibbs/monreal
      2 hm arteta/ramsey/Wilshire/diaby/frimpong
      3 am Walcott/rosicky/podolski/chamberlain/cazorla/ryo
      1 cf giroud/sanogo

      now I haven’t included the remaining deadwood (gervinho, bendtner, chamakh, park) neither have I included our promising youngsters like – Martinez, bellerin, yennaris, aneke, eisfeld, gnabry, zelalem, olsson, afobe, and akpom.

      I agree that we need some world class players but they must be exactly that no more average additions just for the sake of spending money to satisfy the anti wenger brigade

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