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PICTURE the scene. April 10 2010: Tottenham away. 90th minute. The score is 0-0 and it’s a corner to Arsenal.
Cesc Fabregas floats it to the back stick and there he is, Sol Campbell. Bullet header. 0-1. And the Gunners are on course to be championship winners again. The stuff of dreams, for now at least.
Only time will tell whether the second coming of Sol at Arsenal will be a worthy gamble by manager Arsene Wenger.
At 35, maybe he will be restricted to a bit part in the final months of the season, maybe he won’t play at all. But only a foolish Gunners fan would not welcome back the man who said in the most public way that Arsenal were better than Tottenham with a brazen defection from one end of the W3 bus route to the other.
Who will forget the day he suddenly appeared with Wenger at the Gunners training ground, confirming that the unthinkable had happened? The Spurs captain had signed for Arsenal and, looking back, no wonder. After 10 dustbowl years at Tottenham, he won two championships and three FA Cups with Arsenal, and might have even walked off with the Champions League had the Gunners not been hauled back by Barcelona in a Parisian rain shower back in 2006.
At his best, he was a rock solid, no nonsense centre-half who brought physical power to a team obsessed with artistic, passing beauty. When danger appeared, Sol would be the first to club the ball as far away from the Arsenal goal as he could. In the last minute and when your nails are frayed to the skin, that’s all you want.
Sol, of course, can’t just carry on where he left off. There are questions that will no doubt never be answered about that sulky period where he disappeared after being terrorised by West Ham for 45 minutes. You just wanted to shake him and say: “Hey, do you know how close we are to being European champions?”.
It also remains puzzling as to why an international footballer of his quality could simply walk out of Arsenal to say he fancied new challenges abroad, only to turn up at the heart of the Portsmouth defence.
The embarrassing episode at Notts County, where the pound signs flashed before his eyes, was another baffling chapter. But Arsenal cannot carry on as if nothing has changed either, the return of one veteran will not snap the team back into invincibles.
Sol joins a very different team from the one he left, a club still true to its stylish ambition but one still learning how to compete with Chelsea and Manchester United.
He has nevertheless earned his new contract at Arsenal with dedicated displays in training. He has enjoyed being among old friends and thrived on the buzz of an ambitious, title-hunting team.
He looked full of enthusiasm during his reserve team appearance on Tuesday.
What Arsenal fans would have really loved would have been the return of Patrick Vieira who, in all fairness, is four times the legend that Campbell was. But Vieira came at a price that only Manchester City could pay and for back-up, it wasn’t worth the salary the old master will collect.
Sol, for all his personality quirks, is a fantastic consolation. He hardly needs to play to be an inspiration to teenagers tasked with their first attempt to win a championship and he will beef up the Arsenal rearguard.
Anybody who has seen the team regularly this season knows how the Gunners are desperately clinging to the partnership of William Gallas and Thomas Vermaelen, a powerful duo who have brought stability. If one of them were to be injured – Gallas had a mystery back complaint halfway through the match with Everton on Saturday – what do Arsenal have in reserve? Philippe Senderos, whose chance has surely passed, and the unconvincing Mikael Silvestre.
Now, they have Sol.