Rock SOLid

IT IS as though Rudyard Kipling’s paean to heroism, his poem If, was written for Sol Campbell as the stage is set for tonight’s championship showdown with Manchester United at Highbury, opening as it does with the line: “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs.”

Time was at Arsenal when, in an hour of need, Arsene Wenger and George Graham before him could simply turn to his captain, Tony Adams, and see in him the strength of purpose, the resolve to get the job done and the determination to the dig his team out of a hole.

Adams was his rock and with him the Gunners proudly fired on all engines. With Adams withdrawn from the fray this season and building a new life away from football, however, Wenger has had to search elsewhere for stability as the defence of the Premiership title has faltered at the worst possible moment.