BIG INTERVIEW: TYRESE CAMPBELL
WHEN Tyrese Campbell isn’t scoring goals for Sheffield United, he’s watching the stars of yesteryear banging them in on YouTube.
“I love watching the old strikers,” reveals the 25-year-old, whose effort in the 3-1victory over Coventry last weekend took his tally to ten goals in just 16 league starts (and 11 sub appearances) since joining the Blades on a free transfer last summer.
“Didier Drogba, the Brazilian Ronaldo, George Weah. I’ve watched loads of Harry Kane recently as well.
“I pick up loads of little bits from them – their body shape, the way they finish from different positions on the pitch. I try to implement all those different things in my own game so that if I’m in a certain position or whatever, I‘ve got a mental picture of what to do.”
There is, of course, another former Premier League star who has been more influential than any of the illustrious names above.
Campbell’s dad, Kevin, scored 164 goals in 569 games over the course of a glittering career that included winning the First Division title, both domestic cups and the European Cup Winners’ Cup with Arsenal. A cherished source of advice and support, he died in June aged 54 following a short illness.
For Campbell, the death of his father coincided with a difficult spell in his professional life. Hailed as a future England player when he emerged from the Stoke youth team as a teenager, injuries hampered the speedy forward’s progress to such an extent that his contract was allowed to quietly expire. When he departed the Potteries in May, there were no takers.
Yet from those dark depths sprang a remarkable revival. Signed by Sheffield United in August, Campbell gradually worked his way back to fitness and is now the leading marksman of a Blades side that began the weekend top of the Championship.
Is he proud of the way he has turned things around, especially taking into consideration events off the pitch?
“Yeah, of course,” says Campbell, who scored 31 goals in 146 Championship games for Stoke. “But if you ask my mum, she’d probably tell you I’m just like my dad in how strong and accepting I am of things. At the end of the day, my mindset is that it’s life, things happen and you go on.
“With Stoke, it was just frustrating. Every time I was getting up to speed, it felt like I’d get injured again, which sort of killed me. It’s hard to live up to what everyone’s saying when you’re not even on the pitch.
“A narrative built up around it and I understand that because I was injured a lot. But I never lost confidence in myself. Never.
“I could read 100 articles about myself saying this and that, but I’ve never really cared what’s being said in the media. It’s fair to make a story, whether it’s good or bad, but you can never take it to heart because the narrative changes by the week. So long as I know what I can do and the level I can get up to, that’s all that matters.
“With my dad… obviously he’s my dad. It hurts a lot, you know? I think about him every day, I miss him every day. I wish he was still here.
Watching
“But I can’t change anything now. It’s done. So I’ve just got to make him proud. And I know he’s watching over me and he’s supporting me every step of the way.
“Like I say, it’s life, isn’t it? I’ve just got to keep on going and keep the good thoughts with me and use that as fuel to motivate me and to push me even further.”
Campbell – who didn’t start a game until October – credits Blades boss Chris Wilder with easing him back into the fold after that difficult summer.
And he says the Yorkshire club’s sport scientists also used a seven-game absence due to a hamstring problem over Christmas to study his sprinting technique and make alterations that may prevent a repeat of his injury woes.
“It was all about the positions I put my legs into and changing that to protect my hamstrings,” he explains. “I’ve always run on my toes, which I knew. But when they showed me the footage and explained how it puts strain on my hamstrings I was like ‘Yeah, that makes sense’.
“Basically, I wasn’t picking my knees up high enough, the way you see sprinters doing.
“So now it’s all about getting that elevation and driving my knees through and trying to keep my back as straight as I can.
“There was other stuff, too. The way I recover, the way I prepare and warm up, things I can do at home.
“I’m not saying that didn’t happen at other places, but it’s definitely something I’ve focused on more since I’ve been here, and especially after I got injured.” Campbell isn’t the only forward enjoying a career renaissance at Bramall Lane. Signed from Liverpool for an eye-watering £23.5m in 2020, Rhian Brewster had scored just four goals in as many seasons and looked almost certain to leave when his contract expired this summer.
But the injury-prone 25-year-old has been reinvented as a No.10 in recent weeks and, after two goals in as many games pre-weekend, is now in talks over an extended deal.
“It’s been tough for him,” says Campbell, who played alongside Brewster in the England youth ranks. “I know how it feels, being talked up as a great talent, and then you don’t fulfil that as soon as everyone expects, and injuries, and then the stories start and all that stuff.
“But Rhi is like me, you know? As long as the people we care about and the people around us have our backs, that’s all that matters.
“And look – the talent is there.
He’s an unbelievable player, an unbelievable guy. We get on really well on and off the pitch and I think you can see that in the way we play together.”
For the Blades, meanwhile, an instant return to the Premier League beckons, a position all the more impressive for the fact that they were slapped with a two-point deduction for a historic breach of financial regulations before a ball was kicked and spent half the season in takeover limbo.
Leeds and Burnley are also in the hunt, but Campbell insists that nobody at Bramall Lane is worrying about their title rivals.
“It’s not like we sit there in the dressing room at full-time and go, ‘Oh, what’s the Leeds score, what’s the Burnley score?’,” he says. “We’ve got this far by just focussing on ourselves and that’s what we’ll keep doing from now until the end of the season. So far, it’s been more than enough.”
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