Thetownend.com

http://forum.web-fans.com/viewforum.php?f=22

Have a look around loads of news from Mick and his most recent interview

fell free to post as Mick said John Campbell will be viewing that forum today  :)

According to this Cambell played for Orient yesterday, although I'm not convinced anyone would have been playing would they?

It was indoors, a Spurs xi won 5-1

Pen + Paper ... It's not hard!

I hope we sign him!

Well i looks as though we have missed the boat here ! Maybe he is not as good as we thought otherwise we surely would have snapped him up

The lad stuck in a hat trick for us against Torquay - If you google for reviews on Newcastle benfield games its always the same story ...

NEWCASTLE Benfield won their first six games in the STL Northern League but then took just one point from the next two.

They were back to their best at Sam Smith’s Park last night, though, and hammered basement club Esh Winning 7-0.

And once again it was John Campbell who was the architect of Benfield’s seventh victory in nine attempts.

He rifled five goals and could easily have had six but just before the end his goalbound shot was blocked by goalkeeper Andrew Spence and Andrew Rowntree pounced to complete the scoring.



Read More http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/non-league-football/2010/10/07/five-star-stuff-from-benfield-s-john-campbell-72703-27421888/#ixzz18wSzLx4f

He has signed an 18 month contract with orient   :suicide:

He'd fucking better not turn out to be as good as Austin - I only hope we consciously decided we didn't want him otherwise to miss out is embarrassing.

shock we should have offered hima contract when we first got him.

In all fairness, he played with Ball at Man City and was let go when Ball was retained.  Ball doesn't look top quality as yet, so imagine this lad is a bit behind in terms of being suitable for League one.

Either that or there is someone else coming in and we didn't need him.

Like Reading let Austin go and Newcastle let Shearer go etc.

Poor example Rob.

Hope this doesn't come back to bite us.

Agree with the Shop on this one

I'm starting to get pissed off with just how long it is taking us to sort out getting our targets,

 :badmood:

Were the club just disorganised or did we not want/need him? i wonder.....

Heres to hoping Austins staying!

We don't know who our targets are though, unless I've missed something?

I hope this Campbell lad doesn't end up being good - we had a long enough head start to snaffle him up!

Austin Cox Ferry Caddis this lad here that's 5 off the top of my head that we dragged out and nearly didn't sign.

This is frustrating because we've seemingly been courting this guy for an eternity!

The fans needed a bit of good news so it's a shame that this transfer couldn't offer some positivity to us.

I won't lose sleep over it. Non-League is hit and miss (for us mostly miss) - I just hope we do SOMETHING with this squad in January.

Reading let Austin go because he was injured and as far as im aware Shearer was never at Newcastle in his youth to be released.

Poor examples

Actually, in truth I agree with your point.

Is our target League Two?

To be fair, we never bothered to replace a certain defender we sold and Wilson was content (well, he said so publically anyway) with what he already had. I'm not sure why anyone expects this case to be any different.

If (when) Austin gets sold get ready for Wilson to come out and say he has faith in Pericard and Dossevi and watch them be shit and us posting down the line about how he should have replaced Austin 3 months ago, like it was fucking obvious (it is fucking obvious)

Merry fucking Christmas.

Missing out on an established player is one thing.

Missing out on a promising youngster who we had first refusal on and would've cost us peanuts to Leyton fucking Orient, now that sticks in the throat

Lets hope Wilson has another option in the pipeline.

If we thought he was that good we'd have offered him a contract. I know he scored a lot of goals, but we haven't seen him play. The scouts and manager have. Got to trust them and hope they didn't drop a bollock.

edit: Having said all that, IF claims about the club not getting backm to him are true then that's disappointing. Even if it was a no.

Dave, you are worrying about something that hasn't happened yet!  Not even a man with no head would rely on Pericard and Dossevi for goals, it would be relegation inducing with the way we are also letting them in.

This one was a no brainer - nothing to lose - everything to gain. I'm surprised and very dissapointed.

Spot on. That is what annoys me.

Batch I notice that you're trying to provide a bit of sanity in the mongfest that is thisis....good luck with that, mind you don't end up like McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest..

mission:impossible

Can't see how Batch is providing sanity Reg..? I think he's pissing against the wind. For once most of the mongos have got it right.

Consensus seems to be that we needlessly missed out on a promising youngster.. surely you can't blame people for being annoyed about it

Nah...what you've got is a bunch of loons rattling on about shit they know nowt about.

I think this is the mission statement for Radio Five Live's daytime output.

Let's hope we get some of our January targets early in Jan rather than 'missing out' on our targets as seems to have happened the last few years and we seem to end up with the next best

I can only imagine he's the next Lloyd Opara.

Or maybe we are keeping Austin after all ;)

Get out of here with your crackpot theories.

What really pisses me off about all this is the work put into this by Ken Ryder and his scouts, just to dawdle along and then lose the guy, good or bad.  It would have been the same with Charlie had Bournemouth not been undder a transfer embargo!  Guess this is the harsh economic reality and Fitton is not prepared to take the gamble with a grand or so a week extra wages.

The scouts did their job. I imagine most of their recommendations don't get signed.

I always thought that we moved in on Austin BECAUSE of Bournemouth's transfer embargo as opposed to a 'two horse race' for his signature.

We're getting awfully grumpy about this.

I like the way we assume we missed out.  It's much more likely we decided not to pursue the interest.  Wilson's comments from a week ago suggest he was not sure on him, saying he was too raw to be considered for first team action.  It seems he had a lot of work required on him to be ready and even with a small wage it detracts from the budget available to fix some much more pressing concerns.

If anyone was banking on this guy to be Austin's replacement, they are mad.  Austin looked ready from the word go, just lacked that level of fitness you get from a pro.

I am a little disappointed as he did seem like he could be the next big thing. I guess time would tell.

I don't think we really wanted him. As soon as Orient showed and interest we'd have surely signed a contract (if we wanted him)?

I agree Si

I mean we signed Dossevi on the back of two goals pre season and look how prolific he has been !

Anyways, at least it will stop his agent touting him all over the TEF

Which has been quite odd really.

Good luck to the guy. God only knows what we would have said pre-Austin if it was announced that the answer to our prayers was a Newcastle Benfield forward but that's irrelevant.

I guess it'll be the loan market for us if we're not prepared/able to put in a bid for an in-form(ish) League forward.

Either way the club don't have to explain every single decision to the fans.

On £700k per week, add on top NI contributions and the like and you are much closer to £1k a week for the club.  £50k for someone who had problems in the past, according to Ball's interview, and was not ready for first team football.  Weight that up against signing a centre half who steps right in.  Budget decision vs long term prospect.  We clearly just didn't fancy him in the grand scheme of things.  he didn't get a phone call for a whole day? boo fucking hoo for him.

I'm sure Wilson has targets for January. I agree that if Campbell was really high on our wish list we'd have offered him a deal here to be quite honest. We didn't waste any time with Austin or Dossevi as has been mentioned. Also we musn't assume that because of the success of Charlie that John Campbell was going to be just as good.

Fuck me

Yaya Toure will be kicking up a stink if he reads that!

Obviously there's a shit load of unreal expectation on the lad from us, because of Austin. I was also sucked into the excessive belief he was gonna make Austin look like Opara and would set the league on fire. It's just the [big] downside of forums and the internet. All opinions get blown so ridiculously out of proportion it's amusing.

Whatever, as others have said, if he was that good, we would have signed him. Onwards and upwards.

What I said was if we genuinely missed out by procrastinating too long then fair enough, have a go for allowing Orient to steal him.

However "consensus" isn't fact. An Adver headline without quotes isn't fact. Somebody who knows his agent said....Might be true, might not be. There is no indication we wanted to sign him, only that we looked at him.

It would be sane to allow the club to comment before slating them for "missing out".

I'm with Batch. We don't know what's gone on. We might have refused to pay what his club wanted, or we might not have thought he was up to scratch. If we've missed out through incompetence then fine, be angry, but we don't know that yet.

Hi guys, i'm not one to regularly post on here (not for years actually), however i do check this site fairly often and have been a Town fan though thick and thin. Anyway it's Xmas, i have time on my hands and i thought i would put my opinion out there.
I fully agree with the majority in that John Campbell has been treated unprofessionally, re: not being contacted. However the guy was offered a deal, admittedly not something which looked great on the surface, but with the amount of public knowledge about the whole subject do we know if there were anymore incentives added on, ie: goal bonus, game bonus, possible help with re-location, an improved contract after X amount of games?
I for one believe that we have a well run club now, which is run to a specific budget (something that hasn't been done for generations) the question is was this guy worth the punt. Yes he really wanted to come, yes he was impressed with our facilities and undoubtedly he did well for the reserves, but no matter who you are you cannot argue with the fact that this deal was a big risk! I know in an ideal world we would have just handed out a contract for £700 a week, seen how the guy got on, and if he didn't work out then we wouldn't have lost too much, if he did work out the great. Football doesn't work like that fellas, we offered £300 because that's all we felt he was worth/could afford. As a final point, what would peoples views be if the £400 per week (the difference between our offer and Orient's) was being used for example to improve Charlies contract? If that was the case i think we could all agree that would be a better use of the money?!

Welcome borgnan and valid post but ....................

Who has stated that he was treated unprofessionally ? Campbell himself ?, his representative ?

Who has said that we didnt try and contact him ? Campbell himself ?, his representative ?

No

Both comments/opinions come from either message boards or the Adver comments section.

Until I here direct quotes from a direct source then I will not be criticizing either way

Agreed Fred Elliot, that information is coming from other forums/adver and i believe it's from his current manager or something. I think it's fair to say that throughout this saga all information from said source and forums have been correct though, albeit they are bound to be a little biased. John Campbell has reputedly agreed term with Orient so there isn't really anything to be gained by this guy starting rumours imo. My point was that if this information was correct and we did never get back to him, then it does show a certain amount of unprofessionalism. A simple phone call to say "thanks, but no thanks. All the best for the future" is just courteous for a guy who has made a lot of effort to try and impress. Like i said though, it was a punt at best and time will tell as to his true talents. If Austin signs a new contract i think this whole issue will be very quickly forgotten.

There are many angry people on the adver forum over this news. I have to say i was dissappointed to but there must be a good reason to why we didnt sign  him  :no:

Reading the advertising comments on this subject have ruined my Christmas.
My view; we didn't sign someone who might not make an impact straight away. I'd rather we went for people who could impact the team now (when we play next)

http://www.thisisswindontownfc.co.uk/news/headlines/8758594.BREAKING_NEWS__Campbell_yet_to_sign_on_at_Orient/


Playing games, sign and prove yourself or sod off to Orient.

kind of getting bored of the JC saga now after the adver printed the article saying that he signed for orient i had a look at the local paper for orient and the forums and there was no mention of him even being at orient or even playing in that game just some guy called mick claiming to be his friend and manager and basically shit stiring he said JC tore the Spurs defence to pieces now didnt spurs win the game 5-1 so couldnt have been tearing down the spurs defence ? I smell bull shit and mick is the muck spreader!

Truth is he's still a nobody until a Football League side gives him a start.

His agent seems to have done a good job though, lots of Swindon fans have swallowed the bullshit and are desperate for the club to sign him despite never seeing him play.

Yep, and they will no doubt turn on him very quickly if he doesn't turn out to be the next Charlie Austin like most of them expect.

Don't know why people are turning on the club. His current manager said on another forum he was desperate to sign for us and was happy with a low wage and accommodation on a contract till the end of the season. Seems like we offered that and it was the player that changed his mind when he got a better offer from Orient.

As someone else pointed out, if he's been offered £700 a week at Orient on an 18 month contract the total cost to them will be in the region of say £75k. That is a lot of money to risk on someone who might not make the grade and probably 5 times what we risked on Austin. Piss away that money on 3 or 4 players a season and you might as well just save it for a proven talent.

I think everyone is just getting a bit worked up and think he'll be the next Austin, the chances of which are pretty remote.

That's football Jonny. If things were going well we wouldn't be moaning but things are not going well so we moan about everything.

Nothing new is it,

Good post Jonny.

According to DW in his post match interview he has asked JC to come back for another game as he wants another look he said their is a lot to work that he would need to do to be ready for tyhis level and he would be one for the future but obviously he is not a priority as he needs players in that are for now rather than the future.

If JC wants to come to Swindon then he speak to DW  / AF and come to some agreement, I see nothing wrong with a 6 month contract if there are built in incentives, isn't that what we did with Charlie at the start and he surprised everyone ?

Because they are fucking pricks.

****Bump****

Did he ever sign for Orient or is he still available ?

I think the more pertinent question is "Is he any good?"

I know we're all obliged to go into full-on headless chicken mode at the moment, but the worst thing we could do is waste the Austin money on panic signings.

Was just wondering if he had gone anywhere replacing Charlie with a non league striker would be too much of a risk, anyone from that level would need time to aclimatise (sp) themselves with L1 and coming into a struggling team would not help

Had a trial and played a reserve match for Scunthorpe I think recently.

I think Campbell was going to sign for Huddersfield. Well so it was rumoured anyway.

He's been rumoured to have signed for us, Orient and now Huddersfield.

I don't know about football ability, but his PR is top rate.

...and rubbish at the same time.

A lot of clubs have looked at him and are unsure, there must be a reason why.

maybe he's got chronic flatulence or really offensive tourettes?

Fuck off you speccy cunt.

i was referring to John Campbell, but i'm loving your work
cunt

It was nothing.

parp

i'm loving your work too steve xx

I am starting to think John Campbell is Keyser Soze as their is so much hype about him :)

Ade Akinbiyi is free. Let's get him. If we're quick we can steal him off Newport County

All he needs is to rebrand himself as iCampbell and get an Apple logo

Joined Darlington today on an 18 month contract.

I'll bet there were at least 3 better strikers in the Samsung competition.

What do Darlington know about football anyway?

It's quite clear that he wasn't as good as his brilliant spin-doctors were suggesting.

now playing for bedlington terriers

What a random bump

Especially as it was mentioned not much more than a month ago in another thread.

I've been to Bedlington Terriers ground. I've never experienced such an openly loud cacophony of flatulence from their small group of supporters.

Were they creating their own fog on the Tyne? (I know its the river Blyth but it didn't have the same pun involved!)