Campbell lays into fans over ‘fat’ jibes.
Posted on August 2nd, 2010 | 77 Comments |
The sensitive soul pulled no punches in his criticism, calling those people who targetted him ‘idiots’ and ‘pathetic’. Quite right too, as most people will understand that Sol Campbell is a few weeks behind everyone else in the race for fitness, aside from a few it seems. But lets not forget the double standards with which the media are reporting this story with.
Yesterday, The Mirror branded Campbell ‘Blobby’ in a headline whilst The Sunday Express once again lay into fans by proclaiming that we are ‘getting on his back before he has even kicked a ball for us’. The second one has a small amount of truth in it, but I assume it is fine for The Mirror to lambast us whilst labelling Sol ‘Blobby’? Once again, the press have decided to take a pop at the fans using any old excuse. Sol Campbell is a wise head and can look after himself without the need for press interferance, as is highlighted below.
“It’s pathetic,” Sol said. “I had been training for three days – just three days! I am three weeks behind everyone else in pre-season. Don’t they know I have just got married and been on honeymoon?”
“I accept that the picture wasn’t flattering, and I do need to catch up on my level of fitness, but the training kit was not very flattering, and showed up all sorts of things. The truth is that I am now in better shape than when I started off back at Arsenal after a long lay-off. I got myself back into shape at Arsenal, and I think I had a reasonably good end-half of the season.”
Ahh, so it was the training kit then! In fairness though, Sol is right. A lot of people have jumped on the bandwagon for this one as it was easy to do so. He should be judged after a numbr of games for us, but at the end of the day the fans have an opinion, they have a right to it, so why should they be criticised for airing them? Anyway, Campbell continued:
“I am a naturally big guy, but I cannot rush my conditioning, otherwise trying too much too quickly could result in injuries,” he said. “Of course I can understand the manager wants me to be in the side, but the season starts in just two weeks and I really need three to four weeks to get back to peak fitness.”
Injuries are something we can ill afford right now at Newcastle, and Hughton will have to make sure he gets the balance right between breaking Sol into the action whilst making sure he isn’t pushed too hard too fast. At the end of the day, Campbell isn’t as young as he once was, and most of us know what it feels like to be getting older. Things take longer to heal, hangovers take longer to go, I even pissed myself this morning, joking with that one of course, but on the plus side, with age comes experience.
“I’ve seen it all before, done it all before, heard it all before, but that means I also know exactly what to do,” Sol said. It’s a long season and I cannot listen to idiots. I know these things cannot be rushed. What I do know is that I will achieve peak fitness given the time I need to do it. It might be that I will need to play and then put in extra training in between games.”
“My message is simple to all the knockers: I am knuckling down and want to play my football with a great club and a great manager. Then you can judge me.”
Fair enough, and most people will give him that time. In fact I have been surprised how well Sol has been recieved on Tyneside as he is generally viewed as an excellent acquistion.
Well done Sol, get fat fit I mean!
NUFCBlog Author: toonsy
toonsy has written 643 articles on this blog.
I’m sure it was just a bad pic. Maybe he does need to loose a bit, but no way could he really be the size he looks in that picture.
Still thik he is going to end up being a great player for us this season and hopefully guide the young lads on and maybe some coaching next season