JOHN Campbell’s career at Oxford United rests on whether Jarrow Roofing are willing to agree a delay over receiving a fee for the striker.

The 26-year-old joined from the Tynesiders in November, but has only made three appearances for the first team, scoring once.

The terms of the move saw him join on loan until the end of this month, at which point if United wanted to keep him they were due to pay the non-league club a transfer fee to make it permanent.

But U’s boss Michael Appleton felt they had yet to make up their mind on Campbell and have asked Jarrow to put back the deadline until the end of the season.

He said: “We’ve spoken about delaying it until the end of the season to make a better decision.

“The easiest thing would be to turn around and say ‘we can’t make the decision now, he’s going to have to go back’, but we want to give the lad the best opportunity we can.

“We just need a little bit more time before we make a decision.

“Hopefully Jarrow will give us that, we’ll just have to wait and see.”

Appleton rated their chances of success as 50/50.

Campbell has been a regular scorer for the development side, most recently in Monday’s 2-1 win at West Brom.

But the U’s boss admitted the jury was still out at first-team level, despite scoring against Plymouth Argyle.

“He hasn’t really had the impact I would’ve liked in the (first team) games where he’s come on,” he said.

“Some might argue he got his goal and of course it was an important one, but we have to look beyond that.”