Kevin Campbell (footballer)

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Kevin Campbell
Personal information
Full name	Kevin Joseph Campbell
Date of birth	February 4, 1970 (1970-02-04) (age 38)
Place of birth	Lambeth, England
Height	1.87 m (6 ft 1+1⁄2 in)
Playing position	Striker (retired)
Youth clubs
1985–1988	Arsenal
Senior clubs1
Years	Club	App (Gls)*
1988–1995 1989 1989 1995–1998 1998–1999 1999–2005 2005–2006 2006–2007	Arsenal → Leyton Orient (loan) → Leicester City (loan) Nottingham Forest Trabzonspor Everton West Bromwich Albion Cardiff City Total	166 0(46) 016 00(9) 011 00(5) 080 0(32) 017 00(5)[1] 145 0(45) 045 00(6) 019 00(0)[2] 499 (148)
National team2
1990–1992 1991	England U21 England B	004 00(1) 001 00(0)
1 Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only and correct as of 20:10, 17 April 2008 (UTC). 2 National team caps and goals correct as of 20:10, 17 April 2008 (UTC). * Appearances (Goals)

Kevin Joseph Campbell (born February 4, 1970 in Lambeth, London) is an English former football player who played as a striker.

Contents 1 Playing career 2 Business interests 3 Notes 4 External links

[edit] Playing career

Campbell began his career as a trainee with Arsenal, joining the club on schoolboy forms in 1985. He had a prolific run in the club's youth team (with whom he won the FA Youth Cup and scored 59 goals in a single season), but despite making his first-team debut against Everton on May 7, 1988, the Arsenal forward positions were usually taken by Paul Merson and Alan Smith.

Campbell came to prominence during a loan spell at Leyton Orient in 1989, when he scored 9 goals in 16 games; Orient manager Frank Clark wanted to make the move permanent but Arsenal refused to sell the talented young striker. After a poor start to the 1989-90 season he was again loaned out, this time to Leicester City. However, the following season (1990-91), Campbell established himself in the Arsenal team, scoring eight times in ten matches during the run-in to the club's First Division title win.

Despite Arsenal signing Ian Wright in September 1991, Campbell continued to play regularly for Arsenal, although he was often overshadowed by his more prolific partner. Nevertheless, he scored some crucial goals for Arsenal, including last-minute equalisers against Millwall and Derby County in Arsenal's successful FA Cup and League Cup campaigns in 1992-93. The following season he scored 19 goals (his best single season for the Gunners) and won the Cup Winners' Cup, but his form deserted him in 1994-95, and the arrivals of John Hartson and Dennis Bergkamp threatened his place in the side further. In all he played 224 times for Arsenal, scoring 59 goals.

In the summer of 1995 Campbell was sold to Nottingham Forest for £3m, where he spent three seasons. He was part of the team that was relegated in 1997, but his 23 goals the following season helped the side to return to the top flight at their first attempt. However, Campbell left Forest at the end of that season to join Turkish side Trabzonspor. His time in Trabzon was brief; he left the club after only 7 months after a racist incident involving the president of Trabzonspor, Mehmet Ali Yılmaz, who called him a "discoloured cannibal" and also criticised him by saying "We bought him as a goal machine, but he appeared to be a washing machine"^[3]. He was very popular during his time at the club with the fans. To show solidarity with him when he asked to leave following this incident, the two club captains, Ogun Temizkanoglu and Abdullah Ercan were with him during his press conference in which he stated his reasons for leaving.

Everton, who were battling against relegation from the Premier League, signed Campbell on loan in March 1999. His impact on the side was immediate as he scored 9 goals in 8 games, making him Everton's top goalscorer that season despite spending barely a month with the club. His tally of 6 goals in his first 3 games earned him the April player of the month, he was the first on-loan player ever to win the award.

Campbell's move to Everton was made permanent in the summer of 1999 for a fee of £3m. He was to be Everton's leading goalscorer for both of the following two seasons with the club, scoring 12 goals and 9 goals respectively. After scoring only 4 goals during the 2001-02 campaign, he was once again the club's top goalscorer the following year when he scored 10 times. This would prove to be Campbell's final season a first-choice for Everton as he struggled to battle both injuries and the emergence of a number of strikers, in particular Wayne Rooney. Campbell left Everton in January 2005 to join West Bromwich Albion, who were bottom of the Premiership, on a free transfer.^[4] He was appointed as the team's captain shortly after his arrival and he successfully led the club to Premiership survival (this was the first time that a club which had been bottom of the league on Christmas Day has survived relegation).

However, in May 2006, after WBA's relegation to the Championship, Campbell was released by the club. He signed for Cardiff City on a free transfer on 2 August 2006.^[5] He scored his first goal for the first team in an FAW Premier Cup quarter-final match away at Carmarthen Town on February 13, 2007, and was released by the club in May 2007,^[6] subsequently retiring from the game to pursue business interests.

Campbell earned 1 cap for the England U-21s and 4 for England B. He has the distinction of being the English player who has scored the most goals in the Premier League without earning an England cap.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Business interests

In 2003 Campbell announced that he had invested money into his own record label, "2 Wikid", and that rapper Mark Morrison had become the label's first signing.^[7] However in December 2004, with the artist still signed to 2 Wikid, Campbell was forced to obtain a court injunction against rival label Jet Star, in order to prevent it from releasing Morrison's album Innocent Man.^[8] The injunction was lifted shortly afterwards,^[9] and the album was eventually released sometime later.

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• Kevin Campbell career stats at Soccerbase