Arsenal: Joel Campbell’s Club Feud Finally Revealed By Unlikely Source

Arsenal have been seemingly shunning the advances of Joel Campbell, who continues to produce. Finally, we get an indication of why this has been happening.

Few players at Arsenal have turned into revelations as quickly as Joel Campbell. The Costa Rican attacker has gone on four loans in his spell at Arsenal, learning along the way how best to utilize his abilities in each and every scenario. The Premier League was the last stage he had yet to have a prolonged run at.

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This year, fortune has favored him through injuries to his team mates. Campbell was finally given a chance at starting and scored in his debut. He has now netted four goals and three assists in all domestic competitions, across just 15 starts.

But it is not even in his hard stats that prove how quality he is. Joel Campbell has a creativity that makes him unpredictable. At any moment he could fire a shot, dribble straight down the opponents throat, bounce it out to the corner, cut inside or spot a team mate’s run. In that sense, he has made himself more multifaceted than any of his wide team mates.

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And yet for some reason Arsene Wenger continues to shirk the Costa Rican, as he has now allowed Alex Iwobi to pip Campbell’s spot in the starting rotation. None of it made sense. It seemed like there had to be something going on within the club that led to some sort of falling out.

Well, now we know.

Recent reports indicate that Campbell’s lack of favor within the club has to do with a falling out with a team mate, one of Wenger’s favorites in fact. With a team like Arsenal, any sort of breach in team chemistry is detrimental, and Wenger refused to risk starting Campbell opposite the man he had a falling out with – Alexis Sanchez.

The story reads that Campbell and Alexis were having a little post-training scrimmage with the Chilean’s dogs, Atom and Humbert. In a two on two exhibition, Campbell and Atom took on Alexis and Humbert.

It was meant to be a friendly game, but things got considerably unfriendly when Alexis hit a throughball to team mate Humbert, who burned Atom with a well-timed run. Not wishing to surrender a goal, Campbell laid a fierce slide tackle on Humbert, who tumbled in the box. Campbell then refused Humbert a penalty, accusing him of flopping, while also accosting his team mate, Atom, for sleeping on the field (although it must be noted, he did seem a bit distracted).

Alexis took exception and called the game to a close but matters did not escalate just yet(this all happened back in early October).

The game finished 0-0 and Humbert was perfectly fine, which lent more credence to Campbell’s ‘flopping’ accusations. However, Campbell, being a competitive soul, committed the occurrence to memory and several months later, in training, accused to an unnamed team mate of “being a Humbert”, which was one step too far. Wenger had to intervene and sided with his Chilean star, pushing Campbell to the bench.

Neither Alexis nor Campbell was available for comment on the matter, it was Humbert who finally broke his silence, coming forward and telling the press what happened that fateful day.

At the very least, now we know why Joel Campbell has been excluded from the Arsenal starting XI and it does appear to be justified.

Next: What To Do With The Ox?

Happy April Fool’s Day, from Pain in the Arsenal. We still don’t know why Joel Campbell is out of favor, but there is probably no chance that it involves slide-tackling a golden retriever.