Campbell's White Hot reception

It is evidence of the venomous loathing that will engulf White Hart Lane this afternoon, when Sol Campbell returns to Tottenham for the first time since his controversial summer move across north London, that Sky Andrew, the agent who negotiated the transfer, feels it politic to stay away.

The man who got Campbell to sign what Spurs fans regard as the most perfidious scrap of paper in football may have a point, given the poisonous atmosphere that is sure to pervade this afternoon's derby game. But with so many of those who once adored him twisting their features into masks of snarling hatred in the stands, Campbell could have done with looking up into another friendly face, particularly as he regards Andrew as more than just a Mr Ten Per Cent.

The pair met when a teenaged Campbell was a star pupil at the Lilleshall school of excellence, where Andrew was training to become a table tennis player. But although Andrew went on to play in the Olympics, he has yet to master ping-pong diplomacy, refusing even to discuss Campbell's imminent ordeal.

The Arsenal manager, Arsene Wenger, however, describes Campbell as "relaxed, dedicated and highly motivated. He has the inner strength to go there and put on a performance because he knows deep inside that he has done nothing wrong."

Rarely has the crossing of one of football's tribal divides engendered so much bile, with Tottenham fans now more likely to suggest building a statue honouring George Graham than ever welcoming back Campbell.

If Arsenal were not down to the barest of defensive bones, one could have excused them for diplomatically resting the 27-year-old today. But Wenger says: "It cannot be right for a manager to pick his team on the basis that one player might be scared of playing. I want to play my best team, so Sol will play, and if he didn't do so the problem would just be transferred for a few months."

Even Tottenham officials are so embarrassed by the potential scale of the loathing directed at their former club captain that they have ordered the club shop to refuse any requests for anti-Campbell slogans on replica shirts and employed maintenance men to patrol the ground and erase any graffiti almost before it has dried.

Wenger says only: "I can understand the passion of Tottenham fans, but it has to be fair passion, not war."

The official protest, if one can call it that, is likely to be muted. Knowing that there is no legal recourse that could possibly do justice to their apoplexy, Spurs fans have been frenziedly hammering their computer keyboards for weeks in an attempt to at least orchestrate a collective reaction.

The best they have come up with, the brainchild of the team's From The Terraces website, is for "a minute of contempt" as the Arsenal team is announced, with fans turning their back to the pitch and standing in silence.

Others favour waving white hankies, Catalan-style, or even replica Campbell shirts in Tottenham colours, if any have escaped the bonfire.

But still more are totally opposed to the plan, among them Jake Scotswood, who says: "To waste a whole minute when we should be not only intimidating our opponents but encouraging our own players is just plain silly."

The Tottenham Hotspur Supporters Trust, which is recognised by the club as the real voice of the fans, is also anti-protest. Its spokesman, Daniel Wynne, says: "The important thing is for Tottenham to beat Arsenal rather than concentrating on disloyal ex-players."

That sentiment is shared by Tottenham's manager Glenn Hoddle, who fears that his team, rather than Campbell, could be the real victims, missing their chance to secure an historic victory that would lift them above Arsenal in the Premiership for the first time in two years.

"If that happens, the fans will have missed the whole point of the day," he says. "Our fans should realise that their protests will probably make him raise his game.

"I will never forget that scene in St Etienne when he danced around the corner flag after thinking he'd scored the winner against Argentina. I go cold thinking about that moment and how tremendous he was that night. That was him and we don't want that on Saturday, we don't want him at his very best and we would be stupid to incite that."

Arsenal fans, dismayed by Campbell's somnolent performances in a Dreamcast shirt, would retort that chance would be a fine thing. He and the rest of the Arsenal defence have conceded so many goals in high-scoring games this season that the club's fanzine The Gooner wryly asks: "Are We Tottenham In Disguise?"

Campbell seems to have grown in size but shrunk in stature since his move, and Wenger admitted that, though naturally large, he grew unnaturally so during the summer.

"A big part of Sol's problem was that he was still injured when he came back in July and every time he got close to fitness he was injured again," he says. "Now he is as sharp as I've seen him."

Those closest to Campbell believe that today's game could be a defining moment in his career, a moment when he, like the protesting Spurs fans, can turn his back on the past and start believing in his future.

Some of the planned protests were practically Rag Week stunts: the fanzine One Flew Over Seaman's Head is planning to release 4,000 balloons with the word "Judas" on them; the current issue was on offer for "10 pieces of silver".

Campbell, of course, is not a Judas but a Jeremiah, christened Sulzeer Jeremiah Campbell. It might have been a prophetic choice by his parents. After all, the original Jeremiah was a target of death threats because he spread such unpopular messages.