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 With Adams withdrawn from the fray this season and building a new life away from football, however, Wenger has had to search elsewhere for stability as the defence of the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.

Luckily for the Arsenal manager, he now has two men who fit the bill. With one of them, his fellow Frenchman Patrick Vieira, Wenger has been to the well with on countless occasions.

Campbell, though, has emerged this season as a true successor to Adams in central defence, a model of consistency in an erratic line-up and the man to stand up and be counted in these difficult days.

Against the backdrop of a deeply disappointing Champions League exit, defeat at Blackburn and a jittery Highbury draw with Aston Villa 10 days ago, Wenger has seen these two sources of stability keep his side from being washed away by the incoming tide of United's late challenge. As the irresistible fluency that marked Arsenal out as runaway champions before Christmas has deserted them; as the absences of David Seaman, Martin Keown and Robert Pires have given some players a look of desperation; as Thierry Henry mopes, Dennis Bergkamp disappears and Pascal Cygan trembles, Wenger has more than ever been forced to rely on his twin pillars.

If Vieira is Wenger's on-field general as Roy Keane is for Alex Ferguson, though, then Campbell has become the embodiment of the club itself. Understated, unruffled and refined off the pitch; cool and calm yet fiercely determined on it and in no mood to let a second title in-a-row slip from his grasp.

"This is the crunch time and we have come too far to let it slip," Campbell, 28, said. "We have got to the stage where we can almost taste it so it is up to us to make sure that all our efforts don't go to waste. We have got the ability to move up another gear. It is in our hands. We have been here before and it is winner-takes-all now."

He remains utterly unflustered by United's newly rediscovered domestic form, preferring instead to focus on the remarkable spirit in the Arsenal dressing-room, something he likens to a band of brothers.

"I had a normal upbringing really," Campbell said, "the normal inner-city stuff where things were not always easy. But it taught me one thing: how to cherish real friendship. That has been important to me at Arsenal. In this side you leave whoever you are outside the dressing room, the team is all-important. You know that when it comes down to it, the lads will be behind each other. Our togetherness has made us a real force to be reckoned with."

Campbell obviously saw the potential at Highbury when his contract ran out up the Seven Sisters Road at Tottenham almost two years ago.

An international at the age of 20 his England debut coming on that infamous night at Lansdowne Road and having already played in one World Cup, France 98, his performances for Spurs and England had attracted

several big-name European clubs and Barcelona, Inter and Bayern Munich were queuing up to sign him as he became a free agent.

But instead of crossing the English Channel to the continent, Campbell crossed north London and the fans at White Hart Lane who had treasured him as their own for 10 years. It was a huge gamble but Campbell was positive he needed a bigger club to further his trophy-winning ambitions. "When you come from a hard background you never lose that hunger to be successful. I am never satisfied because of that background.

"When I'm 40 I'll be doing something and I will want to do it well. I'll want to be one of the best. That never goes out of your system, it is inbred.

"It is like my colour you can't take that away. It keeps you motivated and striving in the right way. It keeps you striving for ... contentment, for satisfaction.

"I want to achieve things in life."

Achieve them he did, helping Arsenal to the league and FA Cup Double in his first season before going to the World Cup last summer in the shadow of Rio Ferdinand and pipping him to selection in the FIFA team of the tournament.

He is without doubt the twin experiences have made him a much better player.

"How have I improved? My passing is better and so is my awareness as a defender. I am thinking all the time about my defending when to shut down players, when to pass. The brain is like a muscle and if you don't use it, it starts to slow down. I feel there is a lot more to come from me. I feel the same about the team.

"I am hungry for more as are all the players here, players who have won a lot, players like Patrick Vieira. I also think I am a stronger player for being in the World Cup. I'm a stronger person anyway after the first year at Arsenal, but it was good for me to play against the very top players in Japan."

CAMPBELL, of course, plays alongside some of the world's best players at Highbury, though you wouldn't know it at the moment. But although many of them, overseas and home-grown alike, are showing a lack of stomach for the fight, Campbell insists the mix is the right one.

"Having a lot of foreign players really helps with togetherness. Forgetting the occasional language barrier, the mix of nationalities makes everything more open.

"Everyone interacts, there are no egos. Football is a worldwide language so as long as we keep working hard, enjoying ourselves and getting the results, where we all come from doesn't really matter."

Where they are going, though, is a different matter and one which tonight's match will help determine. If Sol Campbell has anything to do with it, however, the storm will be weathered, the doubts erased, and the journey will be completed successfully.

"If you can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds' worth of distance run," Kipling concluded his poem, "yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, and which is more you'll be a Man my son!"

It could be Campbell's future foretold.