Dean Campbell’s calling card is knocking a Premier League heavyweight out of a cup competition. So when Barrow’s holding midfielder lines up at Stamford Bridge for a Carabao Cup tie with Chelsea on Tuesday, the 23-year-old can draw on this for inspiration.
In January 2023, on FA Cup third round weekend, Campbell, a 63rd-minute substitute for Stevenage, drove home a 90th-minute winner against Aston Villa that sent the travelling fans ballistic and gave the boy from Aberdeen an entry in the trophy’s folklore.
“An amazing day for me, one that I’ll remember forever so I am hoping to make a few more memories this season as well,” Campbell says. “It was an amazing atmosphere – I’d never been to Villa Park before and it was an incredible stadium and Villa had a lot of fans there. The atmosphere was brilliant. We managed to take a lot of Stevenage fans too, which added to the occasion even more.
“It’s an amazing experience to play at these stadiums that you don’t get to often. You have to cherish every moment, enjoy every opportunity. So we have to go [to Stamford Bridge] and work as hard as we can.”
As League Two leaders after a 2-0 victory against Newport on Saturday, Stephen Clemence’s side will arrive in a confident mood. They need to be as they try to shock an Enzo Maresca squad that features the elite talent of Cole Palmer, Enzo Fernández, Moisés Caicedo and many more, with the team sat three points behind the Premier League leaders, Manchester City.
Campbell says: “Those players are worth hundreds of millions. So to get the opportunity to play against players like that is amazing. It will be brilliant to see where I am in terms of the level required to play at the highest level. So it’s an exciting time for all of us. We’re all just looking to cherish the occasion, but we’re also looking to go and make ourselves proud and represent the club.”
Owing to Barrow-in-Furness’s remote location on the Cumbrian west coast, the club has, since the early 2000s, adopted a hybrid system in which the players are clustered in and around Manchester, training at FC United of Manchester’s Broadhurst Park in Moston during the week and making the 100-mile, two-hour-plus trip north for home games.
Clemence says: “We travel to a hotel in Barrow and stay there. Because we don’t spend a lot of time in the area, we always send some players on a Friday afternoon to go around the schools and do a bit of work in the community. We’ll also have a little walk around the town on a Saturday morning, have a coffee and see a few supporters there. Then we play and it’s back to training in Manchester.
“What this does, it gives you a better chance of getting the better players or a bigger pool to choose from when it comes to recruitment because, what you find in League Two, you tend to have to sign players that live near a training ground because they’re not paid the money that the Premier League boys are who can just move house.”
Clemence took over in May having been sacked by Gillingham less than six months into his first managerial post. The 46-year-old usually lines Barrow up in a 4-3-3. “I like my team to try to get after the opponent and like to think we’re a high-pressing team,” he says.
“I want to play our football in the opponent’s half and try to get bums off seats, entertain the supporters. We’re an entertainment industry and I want to try to find the best route towards goal for us to create chances and score.”
Clemence understands the challenge of Chelsea. “It’s going be a very tough game,” he says. “I was sitting at home watching Barnsley try to take on Manchester United at Old Trafford and they got a bit of a doing [7-0 in the Carabao Cup] and Barnsley are doing quite well in League One – the division above us.
“So we know it’s going be a very tough game. But what I’ll say going into it is: I’m really proud of us for getting to this stage. It’s a great moment for everybody in the town to be going to Chelsea. A big moment for us all.”
Campbell, who remains Aberdeen’s youngest debutant at 16 years, one month and 23 days, has felt the rush of a big moment, the strike at Villa deriving from cute thinking.
Campbell says: “I knew that they were down to 10 men [Leander Dendoncker had been sent off] so had most of their players in the box and I thought I’d go out for a short corner.
“I got the ball, looked up and saw I had more space than I thought I would. I focused on making a good connection and giving the keeper something to deal with and thankfully I hit it really well.
“Moments like that are what you dream of – to play on the biggest stages and have a feeling like that and get to celebrate in front of all the fans that pay their hard-earned money to come and watch us.
“So it wasn’t just a goal for me, it was a goal for the whole club. It’s something I’d like to feel again and hopefully we all can.”
