Injured Sol to miss Greece decider

Steve Stammers13 April 2012

Sol Campbell is losing his race to be fit for England?s World Cup qualifier against Greece at Old Trafford on Saturday week.

The Arsenal central defender injured a hamstring before the Champions League game against Schalke 04 two weeks ago, but refused to rule himself out of the game in which an England win will secure a place in Japan and South Korea.

But despite intensive treatment, it will be next Wednesday before Campbell is likely to be able to resume training and that will leave him desperately short of practice before such a vital game.

His absence leaves the way open for club colleague Martin Keown to return to the international scene.

This is provided he does not join an ever-growing injury list at Highbury that already includes Campbell and Tony Adams and has now been swelled by Dennis Bergkamp, who injured an ankle against Bolton last Saturday. Bergkamp has been having treatment all week while his team-mates were involved in the controversial 1-0 defeat by Panathinaikos in Athens.

From that game, Ray Parlour returned with a dead leg and Ashley Cole a sore knee.

And to make matters worse, England goalkeeper David Seaman has a sore shoulder.

Manager Arsene Wenger said: ?Seaman should be all right, but there is a bigger doubt about Parlour and Cole.

?What we have to try to do now is get the defeat in Athens out of our systems.

?That was a huge disappointment but we now have a very big game at Derby. We must be ready for that.?

The game in Greece ended with ill-feeling between the teams after the Greeks were accused of feigning injury to waste time. Wenger was given a personal apology by Panathinaikos president Angelo Philippedes after he was berated by another official at the club and striker Thierry Henry launched a furious attack on the Greek players.

Henry is likely to escape punishment as his outburst has not been mentioned by Portuguese referee Vitor Melo Pereira in his report which UEFA received yesterday.

The game?s European governing body are still waiting for the report of their official delegate at the match, but a spokesman said: ?This is likely to be the end of the matter.?

Wenger accepts it will be anything but easy at Pride Park. He said: ?It will be a difficult and competitive game, but it will be an honest one. You will not need the stretcher every two minutes.?

Players? behaviour has been under the microscope in recent weeks with an alarming rise in the number of incidents which provoked headlines of cheating and diving to win penalties or get an opposition player sent off.

But Wenger said: ?I think that, yes, England has the most honest game in Europe at the moment and I believe we should be happy about that.

?The incidents when teams are reduced to 10 men or the game is held up through injuries is more outside England than in England.

?The referee against Panathinaikos was, I think, a little naive.

?In the second half Panathinaikos were trying to get fouls and were diving.

?I don?t deny that they are a good team, but we were maybe a little naive ourselves because we kicked the ball out when their players were down. Yet they were going off and coming straight back on.?

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