I must have watched Super Kev play almost 100 games for Arsenal in the late Eighties and early Nineties. I remember him as the archetypal “big No.9” using his body strength to win the ball with his chest and head, and his considerable pace to run past defenders, shrug off challenges and shoot.

 

He wasn’t the most lethal striker – his goalscoring record of just under one in every three games testifies to that – but he was strong and powerful and always gave 110%.

 

The game I remember most is a home fixture against Sheffield Wednesday in February 1992. Kev had come on at half time for Alan Smith and the game was locked at 1-1 until, in the 71st minute, Campbell broke free on the left. I remember it vividly because I had just loudly asked my friends in desperation: “Why doesn’t he just… SHOOT!”

 

At that exact moment (obviously spurred on by my frustration from 150 yards away in the North Bank), he thrashed the ball into the net from outside the area at the Clock End. The floodgates immediately opened, Kev got another, and Arsenal romped home 7-1.

 

Like most Arsenal fans, I first heard of Kev when he was a youth prodigy scoring 59 goals in a season and a hat trick in the 1988 FA Youth Cup victory against Doncaster.

 

Those feats earned him a loan to Orient, where his nine goals in 16 games propelled them to the play-off final where they won promotion (though he could not play in the final because his loan had ended).

 

With Arsenal’s settled strike force of Merson and Smith having won the title that same year of 1989, it took him until 1991 (via a further loan to Leicester) to establish himself in the first team, when his eight goals in 10 games helped the Gunners win another league title.

 

His opportunities dwindled after Ian Wright arrived later that year but he achieved his best return of 19 goals in the 1993-94 season and, though his form declined, was only 25 when he was sold to Nottingham Forest.

 

After a short spell in Turkey, where he left in disgust after being racially abused by his own club president, Trabzonspor loaned him to Everton, where his nine goals in his first eight games (six in the first three) almost single-handedly saved them from relegation.

 

His heroic stature on Merseyside grew further when, having been signed permanently, he scored the winner against Liverpool at Anfield – which would be Everton’s last success there for for 22 years – and went on to become the club’s first black captain.

 

That was his greatest source of pride, though I don’t know whether Kev was proud or disappointed about holding the strange record of being the most prolific Premier League goalscorer *not* to have been capped by his country.

 

Probably a bit of both, but he had plenty of other achievements to be proud of, including five Under-21 caps and a solitary appearance for England B, in Spain, and a successful post-football career running his own record label.

 

It’s hard to believe Super Kev has gone at the age of only 54.