tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-289234172024-03-08T02:23:04.603+00:00OxbloggerA blog about Oxford UnitedOxbloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02967021179480280905noreply@blogger.comBlogger885125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28923417.post-25569268743901601992019-01-12T13:04:00.002+00:002019-01-12T13:05:35.553+00:00We've moved<div style="text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://www.oxblogger.co.uk/">After many happy years on this site, Oxblogger now lives on a fancy new site www.oxblogger.co.uk Come on over, it's got all the same old rubbish on it.</a></div>
Oxbloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02967021179480280905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28923417.post-75655389923412959582018-12-28T11:07:00.000+00:002018-12-28T11:07:19.967+00:00The wrap - Oxford United 0 Southend United 1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Marketing is a process of creating a gap between what we have and what we need. Sometimes that gap is obvious - there are things we need, such as food, which we sometimes don't have. Most time marketing tries to create a desire where there isn't one - for example, you may already have a functioning car, but after you've been bombarded by adverts, you might want a better one.<br />
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When you're a child, that gap is self evident. You don't have very much and little means to acquire things. Pretty much anything that exists presents an almost insurmountable gap between have and want. The excitement of Christmas is all about filling those gaps. As you get older, the gaps begin to close - you have more of what you want, but we compensate for the loss of that excitement, by inventing new things to want - feelings, status, experience, but it's never quite the same.<br />
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I've always loved Christmas and particularly Boxing Day football. It reminds me of early Christmases at my grandparents where we would go to The Manor as a treat. That memory opens others - the joy of a new football shirt - a luxury I couldn't hope to buy myself - or a Subbuteo accessory. I can buy those things now if I want to, but seeing kids with their brand new full Oxford kit worn proudly over the top of their clothes, makes me want to be seven again. The atmosphere is positive and homely as the cynicism of wizened regulars is compensated by the buoyant mood of family members and guests enjoying the novelty and taking in their first breath of fresh air in at least 24 hours.<br />
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Sadly, the reality of the game rarely lives up to expectations. The game against Southend probably summed up the reality of League 1 this season and our role in it. Southend represented a group of perhaps 15 or more well drilled sides - of which we are also one. They were organised and aware, happy to slow the game down, focussed on nullifying our threats, hoping that they might snatch something, which they did.<br />
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Karl Robinson's assessment was spot on; we don't have options up front to make an impact if Plan A doesn't work. Timothée Dieng in Southend's midfield marshalled James Henry out of the game, Marcus Browne was either tired, disinterested, off-form or injured depending on which Oxford supporting body language expert you listen to. As a result, Jamie Mackie was isolated and Gavin Whyte battled away gamely without much support or success. As teams begin to understand our threats that's what they'll focussed on; when you've got little to introduce from the bench, then the chances of outmanoeuvring your opponents are reduced considerably.<br />
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They didn't look a threat particularly, but neither did we. Our decent chance, from James Henry, went wide. Their decent chance went in. In most football games there are a range of 'fair results' a 1-0 win or 0-0 draw would both have been fair. But so was the 0-1 defeat.<br />
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The casuals, guests and family members won't really care about the result. They will probably draw some grand conclusions about the team or players - I once went with a friend on Boxing Day who thought Matt Robinson should be playing in the Premier League. We, on the other hand, must now move on. January is going to be an interesting month - players will probably leave, others will come in - we may start to see Wembley on the horizon in the trophy that shall not be named, we may even get an FA Cup run. If we're to get anything meaningful out of this season, January will probably define what that is.Oxbloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02967021179480280905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28923417.post-25991182076625322952018-12-26T08:03:00.000+00:002018-12-26T08:03:01.005+00:00The wrap - Doncaster Rovers 2 Oxford United 2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I've found the opening months of the season to be brutal; the chaotic opening, that familiar feeling of despair as the club conspires, for what feels like the millionth time, to implode. It felt like a betrayal of everything that has happened over the last three or four years. From threatening to become the next Brighton, Swansea or Bournemouth to becoming yet another incarnation of the great farce we call Oxford United.<br />
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However, on the field we've recovered, though we're yet to register an away win, we've been picking up critical points - including Saturday's last gap draw against Doncaster. We still sit just above the relegation zone; underlying just how poor the start of the season was, but we should start easing to a safer position soon if results keep up.<br />
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But, I'm not excited by what's happening. I'm bruised by it all. For years we seemed to have a club without a team, at the moment it seems we have a team without a club. The club's new commercial director seems to recognise this; in his regular updates he outlines that he's got to give fans more than a winning team. He's got to give us something to believe in. I can't put my finger on exactly what's missing, I guess he spends more time thinking about it than me. It's got to be authentic, more than just gimmicky themes.<br />
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Although things are changing, the unlikely thread that runs through Chris Wilder, Gary Megson, Michael Appleton, Pep Clotet and Karl Robinson is Josh Ruffels. Ruffels can't be pigeonholed - it's difficult to pinpoint his best position, his strengths and weaknesses, or what it is that has endured him over such a long period of time. He's never been a 'first on the team sheet' kind of player, but his time at the club has stretched from Andy Whing and Deane Smalley to James Henry and Curtis Nelson. Few sing his name, but he's one of only three Oxford United players to play at Wembley twice, a most understated history maker.<br />
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I can't think of a player to compare him to. Matt Murphy? Certainly he's a great survivor, not may players make it through five managers, but Murphy was criticised mercilessly during his extended time at the club. Maybe we were just spoilt by what had come before and Murphy, like Ruffels today, would have been quietly appreciated for what he did if he hadn't had to follow the likes of Ray Houghton or Jim Magilton in the Oxford midfield.<br />
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Perhaps Ruffels is more comparable to the players of the 1970s and early 80s; players who would play for the club for years because Oxford was their home and the prospect of moving to a different club would mean uprooting everything. When Ruffels has retired and comes back to the club to be introduced at half-time, Peter Rhodes-Brown will probably reel off his stats to only be a smattering of applause as most will have never heard the name Ruffels. It's a shame that often the more enduring and loyal characters are over-shadowed by the more impactful short-term players.<br />
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Maybe Ruffels reflects the times; an antihero getting on with doing what he does. Things are changing around him, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, but he keeps plugging away; scoring the odd critical goal, picking up appearances, and generally getting the job done. Oxbloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02967021179480280905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28923417.post-57531046351245348842018-12-20T17:10:00.002+00:002018-12-20T17:10:40.486+00:00The wrap - Oxford United 2 Blackpool 0<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It was good to see Alex MacDonald back at the Kassam on Saturday. The little bowling ball in skinny jeans has cemented his legend in the club’s history and will always be welcomed back with open arms.<br />
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The 2016 promotion team, and its re-incarnation in 2017 as a League 1 team will always be the benchmark by which all subsequent teams will be measured, up until they are superseded. But, they set a high bar, so it’s going to be difficult to knock them off their perch.
But, it’s easy to forget through the giant killings, promotions, derby wins, and Wembley visits the club didn’t win anything.<br />
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As entertaining as it was, they fell just short.
The margins were always close, their comeuppance pivoting around a few specific games; Northampton in 2016, Sheffield United and Bolton the following year; each team turned up with an unerring efficiency, cutting through our pretty football, taking one touch when we would take four, scoring lots of goals, not perfect goals.<br />
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As Michael
Appleton famously said, we were the best football team in League 2. What he didn’t say, to Chris Wilder’s chagrin, was that we weren’t the most successful. Like most arguments, the fall out came because each side were arguing from different starting points.<br />
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Saturday’s win over Blackpool showed shades of the unerring rugged efficiency that proved to be Appleton’s nemesis. A nemesis which seemed to be critical if you have ambitions for promotion.<br />
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There were two opponents, the hideous weather, which could have been enough to turn the game into a complete non-event, and Blackpool themselves, a perfectly competent team with reasonable aspirations for the play-offs.<br />
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Neither seemed to trouble us, the job was largely complete in the first half.
Given our start to the season, promotion, or anything approaching it, would seem beyond the realms of what is reasonable. But, the seeds are there if we can maintain and build on that core strength.<br />
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Marcus Browne will eventually go back to West Ham and Curtis Nelson seems destined to leave at some point, but if we can bolster in January and build in the summer, then after a tumultuous opening to the season, we might actually start to realise our ambitions.<br />
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Critical to this is what I think caused our problems earlier this year; not the manager or players, but the owners and senior managers. The amount of money available seems less of an issue than the speed at which it is approved and released. Solve that issue and the sky is the limit.
Oxbloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02967021179480280905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28923417.post-5491693193421555022018-12-11T09:08:00.003+00:002018-12-11T09:08:29.838+00:00The wrap - Peterborough United 2 Oxford United 2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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James Henry's signing was a bit of theatre; the squad were in Spain, he was flown out to meet them, a fan bumped into him at the airport and took a picture which was posted it on Twitter with his face blocked out. Fans (well, me) started to compared the tattoos on his arms with pictures of him on the internet to try and confirm who it was.<br />
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And, that's pretty much where the theatre ended. It was an interesting signing, our squad was made up of young, ex-Premier League academy players, Henry was in his prime. Was he part of the recruitment programme that Michael Appleton left behind? Or the first of a new wave under Pep Clotet? Nobody let on, of course, though I suspect it was more the former than the latter. In that sense, he was a bit like Danny Hylton; signed by a previous era, adopted by the next.</div>
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And that's pretty much where the comparisons to Danny Hylton ended. If you could compare James Henry to anyone, it would be someone like Steve Basham. Basham quietly got on with his job of scoring goals. You probably won't remember any of them, you won't remember any of his post-match interviews, and you won't hear any of rumoured off-the-pitch antics. Nobody sings songs about Steve Basham, and nobody ever did, but he scored 43 goals - only eight other players have scored more in the club's league history. It was only years later when he scored a sublime hat-trick for Hayes and Yeading against us that I came to realise just how good he was.</div>
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Henry is similar in that through the chaos of Clotet, the painfully extended search for his replacement, and the turbulent opening months of the Tiger/Robinson revolution, he's just got on his with job chipping in with critical goals and generally offering a cool head.<br />
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I remember back in 2016, Alex MacDonald mentoring Jonjoe Kenny when he came from Everton to fill the not insubstantial hole left by George Baldock. That sense of ownership, without the benefit of a captain's armband, is essential in all teams. A number of times, you can see Henry geeing up his team mates or calming them down, he's not the most flamboyant character, but he gets on with the job and people respect him for it.<br />
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His brace on Saturday against Peterborough, like his crucial goal against Doncaster last season which effectively kept us up, shows just how pivotal he has become. He has become the difference between defeats and draws, draws and wins. With Marcus Browne and Gavin Whyte marauding on either side of him and Jamie Mackie causing a mess up front, Henry enjoys the freedom they give him. Suddenly it feels like we're a threat up front.<br />
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People talk about having a 20-goal a season striker, and there's little doubt that it helps to have one. But having a 10-15 goal midfielder like we did with someone like Liam Sercombe, ghosting in to pick up scraps created by people like Danny Hylton is nearly as important. Henry's role has become increasingly crucial in everything we do.<br />
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Oxbloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02967021179480280905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28923417.post-91072986539676720522018-12-02T19:25:00.001+00:002018-12-02T19:25:43.173+00:00The wrap - Forest Green, Bradford, Rochdale, Plymouth<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I haven't written anything on this blog for a while. It's not as if things aren't going well on the pitch. Since the last post we've won three and lost one and we're in the third round of the FA Cup after an excellent win over Plymouth.<br />
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Not only was that win important in terms of progressing, it was our first one away from home against a team at our level (Checkatrade aside, which it always is). We're scoring goals and we've stopped conceding. The performance against Rochdale was, at times, as good, if not better than performances under Michael Appleton in League 1.<br />
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But, something is missing. The opening months of the season have been brutal, and the recovery from the start of the season has been slow. I admire Karl Robinson for getting us out of the hole we were in. I can see why people struggle to warm to him; he's like your mate in the pub who is full of energy and a great laugh. Except when you get home and all you want to do is go to bed, he's the one still going, plotting something, badgering you to go back out to some club or other.<br />
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He needs that energy, it's a thankless task being a football manager, harder still turning a team around in the face of an endless stream of criticism. Even harder in the modern game when you can't bring players in outside transfer windows. When everyone was down, he had to be up, he had to keep coming into work and putting the hours in to solidify the defence and create an attacking style that wins games. He's done all of that.<br />
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The Nile Ranger affair, as much as it was anything, didn't help with the mood. You can't blame Robinson for looking where he can for players given the constraints they're under. It's not that Ranger doesn't deserve a chance while he's free to take them. If we simply punish people endlessly for things they've done, what is the point of trying to turn yourself around? You might as well keep trucking on with your errant ways. But still, the last thing we need is to become a club that attracts negative press or appears to put its morals aside in the pursuit of league points.<br />
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We're also being wound up, apparently. HMRC are taking us to court in an attempt to make us pay our bills. I don't really know how serious these things are, they sound serious. I don't know how easy these things are to resolve. My guess is that, practically, all HMRC want is a cheque and the whole problem will go away.<br />
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Yellows Forum is not exactly a good barometer for how serious this is, but OxVox are sufficiently concerned to have written an open letter to the club about it. My guess is that it's not the lack of money that's the problem, more the poor administration of that money to pay bills. It doesn't bode well for January.<br />
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But, and I think this is where my head is at the moment. What I felt sitting in the stands against Rochdale is that the club doesn't currently have a narrative. At least not one I can easily relate to. Results on the pitch are good, and that's an important start, but the spirit of the club isn't there. There isn't a buzz on social media for each game, crowds are hardly booming, the relationship with players still seems quite distant, fan culture seems a bit flat, the club doesn't feel part of the city or fans or something.<br />
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This season has been one about the mechanics of surviving a terrible start. Perhaps the FA Cup will give us something to believe in, a spark, perhaps January will bring us some inspiring signings and we will take our form into the New Year and, like in 1996, we'll go on a run which will bring a tilt at promotion and everyone together. But, the club have got to resolve its issues, off the field has got to feel better than it currently does, otherwise the results will be a side issue and those with a casual interest in us - who turn 6,000 crowds into 8,000 crowds - will continue to stay at home.Oxbloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02967021179480280905noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28923417.post-68289235385939487602018-11-19T20:42:00.003+00:002018-11-19T20:43:31.858+00:00The wrap - Oxford United 0 Forest Green Rovers 0, Oxford United 1 Gillingham 0<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I used to have a Commodore 64 and the game Rambo II First Blood. The gameplay was even more primitive than the plot of the film it was based on. Essentially, a notably blocky and top heavy eight-bit Rambo runs headlong into a hail of bullets surviving as long as he can before getting shot to shit. I wasn't very good at it and barely lasted more than a minute. I wasn't alone; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHQFbyOzwBc">there's a 10 minute clip on YouTube of which 6 and a half are the load screen and credits</a>. The gameplay is a mere side issue. <br />
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The tactics on Saturday reminded me of that game; give the ball to Ricky Holmes or Marcus Browne and let them run headlong at the defence in the hope of affecting some kind of breakthrough. Pretty much every raid resulted in a predictable, Rambo-style failure until eventually, Browne managed to draw the keeper into a moment of madness and the game was ours. It was hardly sophisticated, but we'll take the points where we can get them.<br />
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It's not particularly entertaining and it won't work against better teams, it clearly didn't work in the draw against Forest Green last week. But, with a newly stingy defence, it's aiding a recovery of sorts.<br />
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Earlier in the season I was complaining about the sheer chaos of our gameplay - players running into each other, defensive errors and the like. The system we have now is disciplined, but obvious. It is suited to a team full of strong personalities brave enough to embark on kamikaze raids into the opposition defence, which is something we have plenty of.<br />
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This is where I think Sam Smith struggles, he's only a few months older than Harvey Bradbury, who many is think of as a raw prospect. In this team, you only get to play if you're prepared to bully your way into the game and Smith is not that kind of player. I suspect Kemar Roofe would have struggled in this team due to the lack of service and team play. Jamie Mackie will demand to be involved because of his personality and experience, Smith doesn't seem to have the personality or game to bully his way into a game.<br />
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Bradbury, as Sam Long said afterwards, is a big lump. Karl Robinson's observation was exactly right when he said that while not offering an obvious goal threat, getting centre-backs booked and putting them on the back foot played an important role in securing the three points. I'm not sure about Robinson's view that we should start looking at the top 10, but between Bradbury and Mackie, and looking at our upcoming fixtures, it feels like we just have enough to get us to the January transfer window in a solid state.<br />
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Only Robinson knows what who has lined up in the New Year, but for me, I think our recent form should mean we rule out a move for Nile Ranger. The morals arguments aside, Ranger is an opportunity, and also a risk, but now we have established a precarious stability and I would rather we focused on planned development rather than speculative opportunities.Oxbloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02967021179480280905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28923417.post-23933962903758861312018-11-04T20:29:00.003+00:002018-11-04T20:29:35.709+00:00The wrap - Scunthorpe 3 Oxford United 3<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
But, I can’t even...<br />
<br />
As frustrating as it was, a draw having led 3-0 is still a freak result. I can’t remember the last time it happened to us before Saturday, less still when we did it to someone else. What is tricky about this Oxford side is knowing what was freak about it. Is it that we scored three times? That we conceded three times? That we led so comprehensively away from home? That we capitulated so badly?<br />
<br />
Which of those is us, and what's the freak? It’s so difficult to tell.<br />
<br />
The good news is that we would probably have been happy with a draw before we started, and it extended our unbeaten run to 6 games. So, it would appear that the result is not so much a failure as a missed opportunity. Should that be the end of it?<br />
<br />
Last week it was announced that Nile Ranger was training with us, apparently unattached players train with clubs all the time, but Ranger is tabloid box office due to his extensive rap sheet of misdemeanours and so the news made the Daily Mail.<br />
<br />
This is not the first time we’ve been faced with the dilemma of considering a player surrounded by negative connotations. Adam Chapman killed a man in a car accident and was sent to prison while Luke McCormick was signed to cover a goalkeeping crisis despite having spent time in prison for killing two children while drink driving.<br />
<br />
Ranger’s problems are more extensive than both these players, but he’s never killed anyone. He’s been involved in largely petty crime for most of his adult life and has got into disciplinary problems at pretty much every club he’s been to. Understandably, there was little support from the fans for signing him. <br />
<br />
But, there was support for re-signing Adam Chapman after his release, and McCormick was, to some degree, accepted when he turned in some half-decent performances. It’s quite difficult to apply different rules to different people facing the same problems. It’s OK to have opinions, but difficult to arbitrarily decide what is acceptable and not depending on personal prejudice. We’re not Tommy Robinson, after all.<br />
<br />
Tommy Robinson is quite a good reference here. His failure is to recognise the rule of law. You make a law and then you apply it. You don't see something you don't like and make up a law to cover it. So with Ranger, whatever you think of him should really be consistent with whatever you thought of Chapman and McCormick.<br />
<br />
To my mind, as a free man he should be treated no differently to any other professional footballer. As difficult as that might feel to us individually, and it does to me, he has to be treated fairly. Karl Robinson is aware of Ranger’s past and said his previous actions aren’t in keeping with the values of the club or a professional footballer. But, if he shows he’s sorted himself out and he can be an asset to the club, then he could get a contract.<br />
<br />
I agree with Robinson's assessment on this, so I don’t object to Ranger being considered. But, the fact we are having this debate is symptomatic of the difficulties we face. In short, we shouldn’t be here in the first place. It’s normal to have players with long-term injuries, but good squads and decent set-ups can absorb those problems and carry on regardless. They don’t find themselves scratching around looking at players who most clubs wouldn’t consider. In simple terms, we’ve been on the back foot since August.<br />
<br />
And so it seems with the Scunthorpe result; freaks happen, they happened under Michael Appleton and Chris Wilder, they happened under Pep Clotet. But, the club needs to be robust enough to minimise the impact of freak happenings. It may be that we threw two points away, but we shouldn’t need those points Saturday as much as we do in the same way we shouldn’t have to scratch around for a striker in the way we are.Oxbloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02967021179480280905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28923417.post-81919297960986817492018-10-28T20:07:00.000+00:002018-10-28T20:07:27.743+00:00The wrap - Oxford United 3 Shrewsbury 0<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
The father of the bride at a wedding I once went to was heard to say ‘if a wedding made a marriage, I’d have spent more money on it’. Hopefully the bride didn’t hear him rationalise her day into a meaningless frivolity, though she knew what he was like.<br />
<br />
It was the same thinking which threatened to derail our 125th anniversary celebrations. The symbolic changing of kit to the colours of Headington United was rationalised as the club ripping off the fans with an over-priced t-shirt. The national press put the boot in - attacking a cynical money making scheme that was nothing of the sort. It got to the point that the club felt the need to issue what almost amounted to an apology. Even the special pricing of £12.50 and £1.25 was questioned by some season ticket holders because they didn’t get a financial benefit from the game.<br />
<br />
You can distill football down to its basic transactions - we pay money, we deserve value for that money. If we’re loyal we should get a reward like we’re buying something from Amazon. By extension, perhaps if we lose we should get a refund. If that’s the point of football - to get entertainment in return for money - then it has no point at all.<br />
<br />
A special programme, a book from the Oxford Mail, a walk from The Brit to the Kassam, a huge display on the terraces, a parade of previous players; all can be rendered meaningless if you put your mind to it. But then, if you keep going with that thought, the whole thing is pointless. Like if a wedding doesn’t make a marriage; if football is just about getting value for money, then you’d be better going to the cinema. <br />
<br />
In 1893 Dr Robert Hitchins and Reverend John Scott-Tucker walked to the Brittania Arms in Headington with an idea about how to occupy young men during the winter. Let’s break that down - they finished their day’s work, probably had something to eat and walked to a local pub to present an idea. You could do that today; walk to your local pub with an idea. Most likely it won’t last a week, let alone 125 years.<br />
<br />
Before that idea, there wasn’t a football club, there was precisely nothing. We assume football clubs come into existence fully formed, part of the package that makes a major town or city. It's just there, forever. But, perhaps millions of ideas for clubs fade and die before they're born. Thousands last less than a few years, fewer still become institutions that last more than a century.<br />
<br />
The idea evolved and grew, it engaged and consumed local people from a city to a county, it battled through two World Wars, countless financial difficulties, one attempted merger, it moved location, it played at the most prestigious stadiums, won national competitions and played and beat some of the best teams in the world. Above all, it was a common thread through generations of people.<br />
<br />
The amber shirt, the programme, the walk, the banner, the former players and let's not forget the win reminded me of how incalculably lucky we are to be part of that idea, to have benefitted from it and to contribute to its lasting legacy. When we die, if we treat it right, the idea will be passed onto to others. A tiny fragment of us, and what we created and curated while we were involved, will live on in the club. Saturday reminded me of that, and that's why all the effort was important. A wedding doesn't make a marriage, it reminds you of what you've achieved and what you need to protect into the future.<br />
<br />
This isn’t a brand invented by venture capitalists and taken to market with a multi-million pound marketing campaigns, it’s an institution created, run and sustained by the people based on a simple idea. We are lucky that the idea endured; that there are people who pushed it through difficult times, who keep it alive, either by putting money into it, or through their endless energy, or just turning up for pointless games, or by playing. A mere interest in the club motivates the efforts of others. Thousands of people, keeping an idea alive, evolving it, changing it, growing it into something else and passing it on; all the while maintaining its core values.<br />
<br />
Something for young men to do during the winter months is now something for young and old, men and women to do all year round. If you can't play, you watch, if you can't watch you listen, if you can't listen, you validate just by being interested. Through all the frustrations and difficulties, hopefully it teaches people something about camaraderie, working to achieve things and dedication. Perhaps it changes people’s lives, or gives them moments of light in darkness. Perhaps it just acts as a distraction from a tough life. Maybe it's just fun and a bit of a laugh with friends. Perhaps those friends help you from time to time. Somehow that simple idea, does amazing things. It's pretty cool.<br />
<br />
So, the 125th anniversary is our anniversary and should be embraced for what it is. Attacking it, cynically crushing or dismissing it damages us and what we stand for. If the club goes, it can't be replaced, the history, the people, the club. We have a responsibility to treat it right, to pass on the idea we've inherited in the best possible way.Oxbloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02967021179480280905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28923417.post-53456729856492431712018-10-26T07:21:00.000+01:002018-10-26T07:21:18.151+01:00The wrap - Charlton Athletic 1 Oxford United 1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Spoiler: I'm not going to talk about Charlton or another decent point or Gavin Whyte's wonder-strike.<br />
<br />
Sometimes you just can't win. <a href="https://www.oufc.co.uk/news/2018/october/125-shirt/">The club have announced a one-off limited edition shirt for the 125th anniversary game against Shrewsbury</a> which will retail for £75. Predictably enough, there's been a bit of a backlash. It's a numbered orange and black Puma shirt carrying the original Headington United badge. So far so good?<br />
<br />
No, the shirt is from a standard template which makes it both 'boring' and 'overpriced', and therefore 'a rip off'.<br />
<br />
It's one of life's great disappointments to find that almost all football shirts are generic templates being used over and over again. What you think is yours is nothing of the sort. But, if you take a look at Oxford United's kit history you'll see there's not much to work with.<br />
<br />
If we'd had a replica of the original kit from 125 years ago, it would have been a yellow polo shirt, like you can get from Marks and Spencer and similar to our 2012/13 kit. After that, and for the best part of 30 years, we wore yellow and blue stripes, a style which sent many Oxford fans into apoplexy when it was re-introduced in 2010.<br />
<br />
The chosen design is a nod to our late-Southern League, early-Football League days. Big Ron Atkinson and all that. What many would consider 'olden days', but not 'ancient history'. For the best part of 20 years we stuck rigidly to this livery with only minor variations. Surprisingly enough we've never re-visited it. A plain orange shirt may appear boring, but it does represent an untapped part of our heritage.<br />
<br />
A shirt doesn't really mean anything until something significant happens while wearing it. Take the 1986 Milk Cup shirt - another significant design which couldn't be replicated for the anniversary because it was rebooted in 2015. The yellow is washed out, it has a horizontal shadow stripe; and a sponsor which sounds a bit like a willy. But it was worn on our finest day, and then again in one of our finest seasons, it's not a nice design, but it is a classic.<br />
<br />
With no sponsor, another nod to our heritage, what is left is a plain orange shirt with an old badge on it. Exciting? Not when you distill it down like that, but that's not really the point. The point is the club are trying to make Saturday a meaningful occasion, and something slightly different is part of it. <br />
<br />
Which brings us to the second point - the cost. £75 is expensive for a t-shirt, no doubt. But, that's not how pricing works. No club shirt is ever really worth it in the sense of cost versus utility (what you wear it for). You could buy a template of the Puma version for £8 and put a badge on it; <a href="https://twitter.com/tim_cowley/status/1055421020318953472">in fact, someone has</a>. But, that's the hollow victory of a smart arse because as much as it looks like it, it's still not the actual shirt. The shirt, plus the badge, plus the occasion, plus the limited availability gives it a value beyond its cost price. What that value is, is ultimately a bit of a punt but it still has the characteristics to be priced at a premium.<br />
<br />
Are the club profiting unreasonably from the shirt? If they sell out the whole lot, they'll make just under £10k. Knock off the cost of the shirts in the first place, the design of the badge and a bunch of tomfoolery around getting it produced, and you're talking about a profit which pays the salary of a mid-ranking squad player for a month. It's hardly profiteering.<br />
<br />
For something to be collectable, it has to has to have 'significance', which is ultimately defined by the collector. If you think the shirt is over-priced and boring, then you're probably not its target market. There are some people who absolutely love this stuff; others who are cold to it. I sit right in the middle. I could browse the <a href="https://oxfordkits.com/index.html">Oxford United Kit History</a> website for hours, but I can't bring myself to spend hundreds on shirts I don't have. I'm quite attracted by the novelty of a one-off shirt, regardless of its design. My first reaction was that I could take it or leave it, but I'm now thinking that if it's in stock and I've got the money, I might get one. Am I being ripped off? Well, you could argue 40-odd years of watching mediocre football is a bigger rip-off, but that's not really the point of supporting your club; I still do it, and so do you.Oxbloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02967021179480280905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28923417.post-56449368150298208102018-10-21T19:42:00.000+01:002018-10-21T19:42:21.958+01:00The wrap - Bristol Rovers 0 Oxford United 0<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
I’m in Devon. It’s partly Michael Appleton’s fault. In his first terrible year, I was so bored, I started to form my exit strategy from football fan to football consumer. Before giving up my season ticket completely I decided that I’d no longer wait for the fixtures to come out to make non-footballing plans. So, in 2015 we decided to go on holiday in Devon during half term week regardless of how the fixtures fell, and have been doing it ever since.<br />
<br />
Then we had the best season ever and I never gave up my season ticket.<br />
<br />
As the result of a traumatic traffic based experience around Cribs Causeway one summer a few years ago which resulted in a similarly traumatic mercy stop at the lawless Gordano Services in peak season to relieve aching bladders and ease mental fatigue, we decided this year to leave early to avoid delays.<br />
<br />
We always stop at Chieveley Services, it acts as the gateway to our holiday. I like Chieveley for this and other reasons. If I’d had the foresight to spend my life doing something fulfilling, it would have been to undertake deep anthropological studies of the nation’s service stations on Saturdays.<br />
<br />
I love service stations on Saturdays, particularly around lunchtime. You’ll be idly choosing whether to spend your last six pounds on a Mars bar or a single packet of peanuts and you’ll see someone in a Barnsley or Newport shirt come in. Or better still Cindeford Town or Bromsgrove Rovers. Then there’ll be others, bursting for the toilet, or a coffee. They’ll have just decanted from a supporters' coach, like bees in a smoked out hive, the journey has made them soporific and so it's time to stretch the legs. It’s less intimidating than a pub, the most aggressive thing that happens is someone asks for an extra gherkin in their Big Mac.<br />
<br />
If they’re really daring, there’ll have their eye one of the naughty top shelf magazines. The pack mentality emboldens them. They wouldn’t buy it for their own gratification, obviously, just for laughs; a trophy to take back to the coach.<br />
<br />
Incidentally, in a world of plentiful bosoms and vaginal exposure in digital form, this cannot be the way Razzle or Men Only survive in print form. Our local village shop maintains a small selection of specialist gentlemen’s literature. How big is the market for people who are desperate enough to seek sexual stimulation from pictures of naked women, and have enough bravado and means to happily buy this stuff - often from a thickset judgemental woman in her sixties who knows nothing of professional client confidentiality - but who are also not able to access the internet? That's one venn diagram with a small intersection; which is no reference to something you'd see in Readers' Wives.<br />
<br />
Back at the services. So, ever since I was a child, whenever I’ve seen fans from other teams I’ve followed their fortunes for the day; who they’re playing, what the score was and what that means to their league position.<br />
<br />
It’s an underrated branch of study, we know all about football through the lens of the media, and by attending games, but we never talk about the bit in the middle. Service stations are an administrative necessity for going to football, but they act as a cultural clearing house for fans dedicated to their own petty cause. Each one, heading off on a campaign to foreign parts from which a story, of some kind, will emerge. Football is a commonwealth, but it’s only at a motorway service station do we ever meet and accept each other as equals.<br />
<br />
So, we’re at Chieveley, but it’s a bit early for most football fans, there’s a hockey team milling around in their team kit, and a couple of people in the colours of Jersey Reds, whoever they are. I still enjoy the hubbub; the curious mixes of inter-generational groups, a woman on her own with more children than she can have reasonably conceived, a couple of such an age that you wouldn't trust them to leave their own front garden let alone drive down the M4, and another, so appallingly obese their bodies slide at a 45 degree angle from the roles of chin fat as though they've been inflated, they are not so much sitting in their chairs as being propped up against them. They are staring in opposite directions furtively as though the empty plates of full English breakfast they have evidently just inhaled are the only thing to have given away their dark secret that heart disease and Type 2 Diabetes are mere moments away.<br />
<br />
Within this swill of people and their stories, I see a familiar light-blue top and an even more familiar yellow badge. Chieveley is only 60 miles from Bristol, so it is possible I will see the odd Oxford fan, although unlikely given that there's still nearly five hours until kick-off. My heart lightens, this must be what it's like for a panda to have a prospective mate introduced to their enclosure.<br />
<br />
But, it's not a fan, it's Luke Garbutt, on his own, in his training kit with his washbag under his arm. He looks a little lost, and perhaps he is, he's a long way from the changing rooms at the Memorial Ground. I hope to see John Mousinho shaking the last drops of wee into a urinal in the gents, or Derek Fazackerley trying the travel cushions fashioned to look like slices of watermelon outside WH Smith, or maybe Shandon Baptiste panic buying an over-priced iPhone accessory from a small kiosk. Perhaps Jamie Mackie is outside contemplating AA membership now he's over 30 and has to think about his future. But there's nobody. He's on his own in what I assume to be a practical measure. Presumably it's more convenient for him to be picked up by the team coach than to drive down to the Kassam and back along the M4.<br />
<br />
I wasn't bold enough to talk to him, after 'I'm an Oxford fan' we have nothing in common. And, let's face it, being an Oxford fan isn't something we have in common either. I point him out to my largely disinterested family; "I thought he was just a normal person" said my daughter afterwards. So did I, there he is ambling towards Costa, like, well, a normal person. I feel a bit guilty about whatever I might have said about him in the stands when I didn't think he was a normal person, but just a footballer. Luckily, it probably isn't much; he seems to have been OK whenever I've seen him. <br />
<br />
Obviously I follow his day - which ultimately involved him not playing in our 0-0 draw. I'm pleased with the point; it's another step in a slow recovery, and also sympathetic to Garbutt whose day seems to have been a largely pointless ball ache. I just hope he knows that they start charging if you park for more than two hours.Oxbloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02967021179480280905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28923417.post-7286717010710480462018-10-14T10:09:00.002+01:002018-10-14T10:09:25.654+01:00The wrap - Oxford United 2 Plymouth Argyle 0<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
When we did our house up a few years ago, the plumber who came to sort something out opened a door in the loft and was confronted by a myriad of pipes the like of which he'd never seen before. It was like a pit of vipers that had been turned to copper.<br />
<br />
It turned out that the previous owner had been a builder, and had built the heating system himself using bits and pieces of pipes and valves from various jobs he'd done all across Europe. It worked, but as soon something went wrong, only he was be able to figure out where the problem was.<br />
<br />
It felt a bit like that on Saturday. Despite the furore over Gavin Whyte during the week, the starting eleven was perhaps the best available in terms of both personnel and formation. John Mousinho sitting in midfield like the world's first free-ranging centre-back was able to protect the back four from it's own disorganisation. It also protected him from his predilection for getting caught in possession whilst being the last man.<br />
<br />
Up front, Jamie Mackie defied age, injury and his ability to play exactly how you'd want him to play - work hard, batter everyone, complain constantly. Get to the edge of exhaustion or a red card, whichever comes sooner, before getting substituted for someone more mobile. He was brilliant throughout, even in his interview afterwards. If you listened quietly, you could almost hear the words 'Danny Hylton' wafting over the airwaves. For a moment, it felt like he was back.<br />
<br />
Marcus Browne simplified everything by running in straight lines at ferocious speed, frightening their back-four. He's a curious specimen; his pace is extraordinary and fabulously damaging, but after each burst he'd have his hands on his knees or be visibly trying to catch his breath. Like a Golden Eagle, hugely powerful and dominant, but every exertion seems to weaken him.<br />
<br />
Still, with Browne's ability to make everyone run in straight lines; Ricky Holmes' talent to disrupt becomes an asset rather than a confusion to his own players.<br />
<br />
It worked, and worked well; it was three points we desperately needed. But it still doesn't feel like the sustainable solution that is going to give us the 18 more wins we'd need to trouble the play-offs. Like the plumbing system; when everything works its fine, but what happens when it doesn't? There isn't another John Mousinho, Marcus Browne or Jamie Mackie in the squad. Each new mix of players produces a different system; some that work fine, some terribly. It is, at best, another holding solution.<br />
<br />
Karl Robinson was more subdued, which appeared to be deliberate. For him, it was a no-win situation - a loss would have been catastrophic, a win, against Plymouth, at home was no more than a minimum requirement. For many, it was never going to be more impressive than turning up on time for kick-off. The result, whatever it turned out to be, was never likely to turn public opinion in his favour.<br />
<br />
Part of Robinson's problem was illustrated by the Gavin Whyte affair. He showed all the frustration of a fan in seeing Whyte miss a crucial game to sit on the bench for Northern Ireland, but his bargaining position was limited. As Michael O'Neill said, it's not his fault League 1 games don't get postponed during an international break, and the rules are clear about who decides who plays. Plus O'Neill probably had 10 times the media opportunities to get his view across than Robinson.<br />
<br />
But, Robinson's lack of strategic thinking meant his outburst about the disrespect being shown to the club and the disgrace made him look petulant and childish; particularly when it got amplified via various national media outlets to fill time between international games. From a PR perspective, he walked right onto a sucker punch.<br />
<br />
With fans already against him, he was always going to look stupid picking a fight he couldn't win. Fans were always going to spin it to prove their point about his inappropriateness for the role. Had he said, calmly, that he had made attempts to contact O'Neill to see what Whyte's situation was and whether he could play, omitting all the stuff about it being disrespectful and a disgrace, it wouldn't have made the national headlines and local fans may have seen Robinson as the hard working, always thinking manager he appears to be. With Sean Derry on interviewing duties, and Robinson spending long periods on the bench, the aim seemed to be to calm the whole situation down and avoid saying something stupid.<br />
<br />
Derry said that Southend and then Plymouth were building blocks. Nothing is solved yet. There is no magic - black or otherwise - as Robinson frequently tries to claim, deciding our fate. It is what it is, a win, and that's all that's important right now.Oxbloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02967021179480280905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28923417.post-35470784295183332022018-10-07T08:19:00.001+01:002018-10-07T08:22:11.357+01:00The wrap - Southend United 0 Oxford United 0<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
The phrase 'get out of our club' or variations thereof have been bellowed at Karl Robinson more than once in the last week. It's a phrase that makes me increasingly uncomfortable.<br />
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The use of 'our' insinuates mob rule which aims to isolate its target. It says 'we' are in agreement that 'you' are not part of this and therefore have no say. I'm no fan of bullying, and this is the dictionary definition of that.<br />
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The second is the implication that Robinson should do the honourable thing and fall on his sword. He should 'get out'. This would be wholly to his detriment. Whatever you think about the club or Robinson, he has every right to try to fix the problems while the club are prepared to pay him to do that. He has a career to protect, and by extension, a family to support. People very rarely leave their job because of some unwritten moralistic standpoint; they keep working up until they find something better to do or someone tells them to leave.<br />
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Therefore, until he is told otherwise, he should be given the opportunity to fix the problems. Moreover, if he does fix them, then those successes should be recognised. A point at Southend does not solve the problems of the last few months, but it is a step in the right direction. For some, there was disappointment that it didn't fit their preconceived narrative of Robinson's failings.<br />
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Don't get me wrong; there's a lot to do. We've got to claw back five points just to get out of the relegation zone, fourteen to bother the play-offs; which is where success should lie if we're looking to make progress. In addition, there's a lot of trust to be won back.<br />
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I think relegation is more than avoidable, but the play-offs are a distant hope, and it's a longer stretch still to think that the fans will fully embrace Robinson. The implication for the club is that without that trust attendances are unlikely to grow. Even if we finish bottom this season, it will be our third highest finish in the last 20 years, but nobody is going to get excited by that.<br />
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I think the likelihood of getting near the play-offs are virtually zero. As a result, I think the club have to look at whether Robinson is the long term solution. I wouldn't argue against it if they decided he wasn't.<br />
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But, I don't believe he is an incompetent charlatan, nor a dishonourable man. I don't believe he doesn't feel it when things go wrong. I don't believe he shirks work. When people talk about him 'taking responsibility' for the issues, he frequently does, but when he tries to explain where he thinks those problems are, which inevitably talks about players not doing what they're supposed to, it's viewed as blaming others.<br />
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Some of the things he's done and said recently have been confusing, no doubt. But I think that's down to the stress of the situation. I don't think giving Shandon Baptiste the captain's armband is clever, or disowning the signing of Jamie Hanson. Perhaps in hindsight, he knows these things are wrong. He needs a clear head, and that is going to be increasingly difficult if this run of form continues.<br />
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Earlier in the season I said you'd have to take stock after twelve games. That's where we are at the moment. If Robinson were to be given the sack, then it would be difficult to argue a case against that. If not, then the we have to focus on the next 10 or so, rather than wait for him to get the bullet so we can all salivate over his execution, there's a lot of lost ground to make up. If Robinson does somehow muster the troops and start moving us forward, then he'll have my backing. 'Our' club's door should always be open to success.Oxbloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02967021179480280905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28923417.post-58393797137576776352018-10-03T17:20:00.001+01:002018-10-03T17:20:39.463+01:00The wrap - Oxford United 1 Luton Town 2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Joe Burnell won't demand many paragraphs in the history of Oxford United. So much so, I had to look up his name, and then again when I forgot it twenty minutes later. But, he made a significant contribution to the resurrection of the club when things were at their lowest.<br />
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At the end of September 2008, having only won one league game at home, we faced Cambridge United. There were rumours we were going into administration and that the season was already lost. Burnell was captain, brought in by Darren Patterson. In the opening minutes he flew into what you might call an early-doors reducer, which drew a booking. It also set the tone to fight for a 3-1 win.<br />
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Ultimately neither Patterson nor Burnell survived long, but after that result we no longer felt sorry for ourselves and remained unbeaten in the league at home until the last day of the season. By this point Chris Wilder was manager and we'd gained enough momentum to threaten the play-offs. A year later, we were promoted.<br />
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That tackle galvanised that squad, last night confirmed this one is falling apart. At the heart of the problem is chaos. It's everywhere you look.<br />
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Shandon Baptiste - 'the future of the club' - got the captain's armband for the Manchester City game, principally for the experience. Then, with John Mousinho dropped, he got it again against Luton. Why?<br />
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According to Karl Robinson, being captain is such a distraction, that experienced players like Curtis Nelson can't do the role while negotiating a new contract. And yet, it's so trivial it can be handed over to a 20-year-old with seven league games under his belt during a losing streak. So, is it important or trivial? Has it been taken off Curtis Nelson to relieve some burden, or as punishment for not signing a contract? Nelson may well leave at the end of the season, maybe before, but what benefit is preventing him from being captain offering? If he's not performing don't play him, if he is, use him to his max. Wouldn't making him captain hold him to account even if he were looking elsewhere?<br />
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When the players needed to pull together and keep their heads, the onus was on Baptiste make it happen. Not only did he lack experience and authority, he was already on a final warning before being sent off. It might have happened without the armband, but it was an unnecessary complication for him to deal with. Perhaps without that sense of having to lead by example, he'd have pulled out of one of his challenges and stayed on the pitch.<br />
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When Luton equalised, Cameron Brannagan was seen berating Nelson. Would he have done that if Nelson had been captain? Perhaps not. Does Brannagan - consciously or sub-consciously - look at Nelson as a weakened authority because he's lost the captaincy? Maybe. Did Baptiste have the authority to defuse the situation? Probably not.<br />
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The ill-discipline spread. Baptiste's sending off was inevitable and deserved. But Hanson was flying around with no discipline. He could have been the Joe Burnell, igniting some fight, Robinson said he'd 'lost his head', then went on to him being 'the club's signing' (not his). And despite him deliberately isolating the player, he then claimed he was his protector. But which is it? <br />
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Up front, Jon Obika's role was never going to look pretty; lone strikers never do. It's you against three or four defenders. You run into walls, lose out on challenges and fall over a lot. Your role is either to hold the ball up for others, flick them on to runners, chase them down when sent over the top, or simply to wear their defenders down in order to let others with pace to exploit their exhaustion. Most of the time you're just being crowded out or out muscled. It's just maths, you against three or four others, you're not going to win very much. It's thankless.<br />
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Obika did some of these things he needed to do, some of the time, but those around him weren't ready to benefit from his work. Was there a plan? Robinson claimed they'd talked about it, it's just the players hadn't done what they were told. This raises the question as to why? But, I think it was more flawed than that - Obika is the man you bring on late to exploit the damage done by a battering ram like Jamie Mackie. We did the opposite.<br />
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Now, look at Ricky Holmes' goal - it was an excellent goal, driving to the edge of the box before threading his shot through six or seven players who were converging on him. Even then, look more closely, you'll see Oxford players being caught up in Holmes' break. There's no shape to give him options, nobody anticipating rebounds, eventually everyone stops running because the space has become so crowded. Thankfully on this occasion, it wasn't important and Holmes found the net, but he frequently runs into traffic and attacks break down or worse. Has Robinson got a plan for Holmes? It doesn't look like it.<br />
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Here's my theory. We often applaud managers that are good with a tight budget - John Coleman at Accrington is an excellent example, maybe Chris Wilder as well. Then there are managers who are good with a good budget. It's often considered easy to have a big budget, but it isn't. Having a big budget means having more players who expect to play and expect their talent to override the need for tactics or plans. You can't manage things as tightly, you have to let players express themselves, but only within a framework that wins you games.<br />
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Robinson is the kind of manager that needs a good budget to be successful. It can be expensive and wasteful, but it can be very successful. There's a skill in keeping stars happy, keeping everyone engaged and involved. Perhaps when Robinson says the players think they're the best managed in the league he means his squad has the best fun. In these cases, organisation is less important than the vibe you create. If you get the right vibe, then the performances take care of themselves. If you get the vibe wrong the creative space become a chaotic space, then the failure is uncontrollable and spectacular. Those who like that environment no longer contribute, those who hate it become disillusioned. The discord is evident, the lack of product, the utter and abject failure is there for all to see. Look as hard as you like, there are no shoots of hope.<br />
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I think that's where we are at the moment. Enough ability in the squad, but totally out of control. It's impossible to see how 'fun-boss' Karl Robinson can suddenly pull rank in order to instill the discipline needed to win games. I'm not sure he has the ability to do that either, he's the life and soul of the party, not a sergeant major. To not put too fine a point on it; it looks like we've reached a dead-end.Oxbloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02967021179480280905noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28923417.post-23275872909182345212018-09-30T08:49:00.002+01:002018-09-30T08:49:56.770+01:00The wrap - Wimbledon 2 Oxford United 1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Football clubs have funny structures; at their most important point - the interface between the machine that funds the club and the machine that delivers the benefit is one person; the manager. If it were a car, it would be like having a single screw holding the engine to the chassis.<br />
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Clubs are beginning to wise up to the idea that they have this single point of failure. A club like Watford, for example, have changed their manager almost annually in recent years, while the machine the sits behind them has remained fairly stable. Despite this apparent flux, they have progressed year on year.<br />
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Managers don't last very long; yes, owners are often hasty in their decision making and sometimes managers attain positions they are barely capable of leading on the basis of their connections or playing record. But, it's not always a simple question of competence.<br />
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Being a manager is a ridiculously stressful job and often its that, not their ability, which results in their departure. They're the aforementioned single point of failure, they have to explain everything to the media, they are in an occupation which has only 92 positions in the country of which no more than one or two are vacant at any one time. With the odds stacked against you; it's surprising that any manager is wholly rational and logical in the first place; if you applied logic to football management as a career choice, you wouldn't choose it in the first place.<br />
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Stress comes from being overwhelmed with the information you're expected to process. Sometimes there's too much, sometimes it makes no sense and you can't find the links and logic. The log-jam of unprocessed information causes your brain to go into overdrive trying to process it day and night, or sometimes shutting down and pretending its not happening.<br />
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Karl Robinson is stressed. Not because he's stone cold incompetent; what he achieved at MK Dons and Charlton both show he is capable of managing a football club to a degree of success. But, his current situation hasn't happened to him before. Injuries, performances that don't produce goals or results, an owner he struggles to communicate with, fans that don't trust him; all at the same time, one overlapping another like waves.<br />
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Even if he has been given assurances, there must be some part of him that knows his job is under threat. Add to this the knowledge that reputations are rapidly crushed in football; one failure and your reputation can drop like a stone. It's not just a question of proving your competence, it's also that your failures make you toxic from a PR perspective.<br />
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The signs are there - last week he skulked his way through his interview feeling sorry for himself, yesterday - after the defeat to Wimbledon - he was even less coherent. There was something about him doing his job by preparing the team in the middle section of the field, it was, he said, down to players to put the ball in the back of the net. The subtext was that it was them to blame, not him.<br />
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I think I know what he meant, when you're in front of goal, someone has to take a risk and shoot. But the idea that once the ball reaches the penalty box, the manager's job is done is clearly nonsense. Anyone who saw Liam Sercombe score 17 goals from midfield in 2015/16 - frequently following up missed opportunities - knows that you can increase the chances of scoring through a pre-defined way of playing.<br />
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If you add to this his decision to take the captaincy off Curtis Nelson or drop Cameron Norman because - as stated publicly - he's not playing well (not because Sam Long did well against Manchester City), suggests to me that he might be being honest and straight forward, but he's not thinking about how his actions might impact the players or the fans.<br />
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It's important to separate out Karl Robinson, the person, from any stresses he is currently experiencing. I don't believe he is an incompetent charlatan, who has managed to trick his way through his career. I do believe that he's struggling to process the problems he has and I question whether he will get the support or headspace to recover his rational side. And, for that reason, you have to question whether - for him and the club - the relationship is sustainable.Oxbloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02967021179480280905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28923417.post-79364828859779140682018-09-27T20:16:00.002+01:002018-09-28T13:42:24.717+01:00The wrap - Oxford United 0 Manchester City 3<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I like the Premier League; I get all the arguments about the obscene amounts of money being thrown around and the effect foreigners have on the England team, but in the end it's all a bit of a blur of numbers and names and I've long given up trying to keep up. Instead, I quite enjoy the spectacle; the games, the goals, Match of the Day and in a world where you're lucky to have two teams with a chance of a domestic league title, the fact there are five or six who can win it, the competitiveness.<br />
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I even quite like Manchester City - I admire their dedication to excellence and recognise that their dominance is the result of relentless professionalism not a god given gift. I think they probably do good things for the women's game and local community too. If you're going to buy your way to success, at least they've done it with a degree of class.<br />
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But theirs is not the same football I watch. Like one of those genetic curiosities where man is more closely related to a fish than a monkey, if you were to pick apart the DNA of the lower leagues, you'd probably find it had more in common with club rugby than with the Premier League. And it's not less valid because of it.<br />
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So, what did we watch on Tuesday? Who knows? Nobody could really calibrate it - some said that if, by some miracle, we contrived to win, then Karl Robinson would take all the undeserved glory, if we got obliterated, then it would crush us for the rest of the season. They probably wouldn't play a strong team anyway. We practically talked ourselves into it being a non-event.<br />
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Robinson's response was curious - we're playing the best team in the country and one of best in the world, so <i>we</i> field a weakened team. Was that to avoid the impact of a crushing defeat on morale? To make us appear as blasé as them and therefore, a little bit like them? Did he, like us, not really want the game to happen? Or did he just want to turn it into a debacle against which he couldn't be judged? It just made the whole spectacle harder to understand.<br />
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The mismatch was so huge, it was no longer a game of football in the sense that we understand it. It was like a fight between a lion and a goldfish. The lion eviscerates the goldfish, nobody is surprised. It's superior, but that doesn't mean the lion can live under water. Or something. It was not 'a match' - as there was nothing to match them with us. It proved nothing, it was just, a thing. An exhibition. A piece of benign mid-week light entertainment.<br />
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The club seemed to confuse the size of our stadium with the size of our opponents. Dire warnings of parking and traffic chaos meant people like me turned up earlier than they would for any other game, even though it was a crowd size very similar to games against the likes of Swansea, Newcastle and Northampton. As a result, I was there when the City coach turned up flanked by Mercedes people-carriers full of, what? Secret service agents? They don't have those when Accrington turn up.<br />
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At the back of the South Stand was some multi-directional high tech contraption set up by City which presumably was monitoring the players and their movements. For City, perhaps this was just an exercise in data capture - I assume they can now predict that Nicolas Otamendi will have a headache a week next Tuesday based on the way he traps the ball on his thigh. This is not the same football we play.<br />
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Nobody expected us to even come close to winning, so the tension of expectation was completely absent. Even our display, as impressive as it was, didn't stir the loins like the unveiling of the giant flag against Swindon. It was all very polite and deferential. The Guardian said we were 'outclassed' in the way the lion 'outclassed' the goldfish.<br />
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So, if the result wasn't the point of the exercise, did we learn anything? The game felt like one of those stress tests that new tech products go through so you can boast to your friends they'll work even if you lived on Venus, which you won't, rendering the boast both impressive, and meaningless.<br />
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We were given tests which we'll never experience against the likes of Bradford or Southend. We were tested on how we would defend a 70 yard cross field pass to a man with the speed of an Olympic sprinter. At one point they were passing it around the back line, with every pass they'd move forward pushing us back while their midfield darted in between our legs offering options and generally bamboozling us. It was like the crusher scene in Star Wars - slow, relentless; an impressive show of force, but not one we'll come across in League 1.<br />
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But, we coped pretty well; we weren't humiliated like many feared, we showed that we do have discipline, something that's been so absent this season. We probably saw the future of English football, until he disappears without trace under a pile of more fully developed expensive foreigners bought from the Bundesliga and elsewhere. If we apply ourselves in the league like we did on Tuesday, then we'll be OK once we're back with our own. It was a perfectly pleasant evening, but no more than that.Oxbloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02967021179480280905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28923417.post-83597921337796079372018-09-23T08:34:00.002+01:002018-09-23T13:57:08.844+01:00The wrap - Oxford United 1 Walsall 2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's easy to be drawn into the idea that the blame for a problem is everyone else's fault, or worse, that a problem is so normal you no longer recognise it as a problem, it's just how it is. If you have no concept of what good looks like, you accept that what you have and that's where you stay.<br />
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Saturday's fan forum confirmed something to me that I didn't realise I had an opinion about. It's time to leave the Kassam Stadium. </div>
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A vision isn't about wild unspecific ambition; it's about painting a picture of a future state which takes you out of your existing state and sets you on a path to something else. The club said they're 'actively considering' a move; which doesn't go far enough for me. To actively consider something, says that we're thinking that we might think about it. A vision should disambiguate that statement - something like; we don't see the club being at the Kassam in ten years time.</div>
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We are in an abusive relationship with Firoz Kassam. While constantly dangling the carrot of a better future - the sale of the ground to the right people - he punishes us with punitive rents and court battles. He paints a picture that we should be grateful to him for first saving the club and then giving us a new home and, to some extent, we have grown to believe all this. It is true, he did save us and give us a new ground, but for nearly 20 years, he's been mean and spiteful. Our mindset is that he looks after us, so if we look after him, he'll be happy. Even if, in reality, we're not happy and even though there is nothing we can do to make him happy.</div>
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After such a long time, we have to accept there's little prospect of anything changing. So it's time to take control; and the first step is to say that the Kassam Stadium is no longer in our future vision.</div>
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This is not to say that any move is imminent, or that a sale cannot be achieved, but it breaks us out of the idea that after 20 years of this behaviour, Firoz Kassam is going to turn up one day in a collaborative mood ready to make a deal. There has been no evidence of that happening in the past, therefore, why should we plan on the basis that it might happen in the future?</div>
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Kassam might simply shrug his shoulders, he can always build houses on the land and make a lot of money from the site. It takes a special lack of empathy to be a slum landlord. He's right, of course, it is his life, his money and his land. But we don't need to exist to serve him. </div>
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The club has existed in this state for too long, even some diehards on the phone-in talked about 'good times' at the Kassam, but in seventeen years, there are precious few and those typically result from the exhaustible generosity of owners - Ian Lenagan when we got promoted from the Conference, and Darryl Eales when we got promoted from League 2. Those successes weren't brought about by the stadium, in the way The Manor played its part in our successes of the 80s and in 1996. They happened in spite of where we were playing. Even when the ground is full of colour and noise, you can see if the ball has hit your car in the car park like we're a non-league team. If Kassam had any empathy - or any long term vision of us as a successful club which he could benefit from - he'd have finished the stadium and developed it in line with modern football. He doesn't, as long as we give him money, he won't take us to court. It's no way for us to live.</div>
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There is likely to be an explosion of investment as the Cambridge to Oxford expressway is developed; football has always been popular, but it's now mainstream, middle class and acceptable. It seems absurd that Oxford's football club is such an outlier in the city's entertainment landscape. If you live around the city, the local club is hardly a place to take the family for a fun day out. </div>
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Incidentally, I liked Jerome Sale's suggestion that the club's nickname should change to The Manors; the U's is a terrible nickname anyway, and it would reflect a time when we were part of something bigger. Bringing the club and city together, as Tiger has alluded to, has to be part of the vision.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
It's difficult to think that Karl Robinson is part of the grand vision for the club, no manager or player is, or should be. Most don't last more than a couple of years, so they're a chapter in the story rather than the story itself. </div>
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He didn't have a good day, of course; he was the first manager to admit that the ground was poor. The negative tone seemed to seep into the afternoon, which was cold and miserable. The performance was familiar - plenty of chances, lots of corners, very little that lifts you out of your seat. We were beaten by a team that was simply more efficient and organised. </div>
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We played like Robinson's sideline persona - all energy and no discipline. For the first goal - and the incorrect suspicion that it was offside - he looked up to the gantry in the South Stand wanting to get confirmation either way from those filming the game. He even tried to get the fourth official to refer the decision as if it were some kind of VAR system. It was ridiculous, but Robinson was caught up in the moment and didn't seem to be thinking straight.</div>
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Afterwards he seemed particularly downbeat, he'd encouraged the team not to push it, but they hadn't responded. Perhaps they're more influenced by his arm waving than by his words. I think he's a better manager than he's currently showing, but he seems to be overwhelmed with his emotions at the moment. Ludicrously high on the field, childlike and sulky off it. </div>
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He's right, we don't have the players to naturally simplify our style - Marcus Browne being the most obvious - but Robinson's own actions can't be helping. Players are trying hard to make things happen, but it's their lack of organisation, discipline and clear headedness - the on-pitch equivalent of referring to non-existent VAR - which is causing the problems. The excuses he's finding, from the stadiums to the injuries to the decisions, will seep into the minds of his players. It's not down to them, it's down to bad luck; something intangible that they can't control. Like the stadium situation, it's time to own the problem.</div>
Oxbloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02967021179480280905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28923417.post-6537732959614294182018-09-16T20:00:00.001+01:002018-09-16T20:00:35.326+01:00The wrap - Wycombe Wanderers 0 Oxford United 0<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Any talk about derbies is like a school playground argument about who is your best and second best friend; unresolvable, circular, divisive and ultimately pointless. So, inevitably, as another Wycombe/Oxford fixture swings by, the discussion begins again and remains unresolved. Again.<br />
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Most Oxford fans dismiss the idea for obvious reasons; we have established rivalries - Swindon, obviously, and Reading (who we haven't played against for 14 years). Admitting any sense of rivalry with Wycombe would, in the eyes of some fans, bring us down to Wycombe's level. And in their eyes that's non-league despite Wanderers having been a Football League club for a quarter of a century. Every time a fixture does come by, of course, it doesn't stop a scramble for tickets.<br />
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Perhaps with a derby, as well as proximity, you've got to have forgotten why you don't like a team in the first place in order it to turn into something deeper. In truth, I really like Wycombe; I like the fact that I've only ever missed one meeting home or away. I like Adams Park, its setting in the foothills of the Chilterns is fantastic and as a stadium it reminds me of The Manor - a bit disjointed, but at the same time complete - a home rather than a stadium. We invariably sell out our allocation which means the atmosphere is always good. The two teams have been evenly matched over the years, so more often than not, it's a good game.<br />
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My daughter came to the game on Saturday, she's been to a few sparsely populated enormo-domes which have been comfortable and fun to watch, but she's never experienced the febrile intensity of a packed away end. I would have told her that this was what the London Road was like, but she has no concept of us playing anywhere other than The Kassam. Needless to say she loved it, even if she did hear a few too many shouts of 'cunt' than I'd have liked. I'd also like to think she's aware that the 'wanker' sign is not an innocent gesture of Corinthian rivalries.<br />
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Saturday's edition was a fine complement to the series - it galloped along at a fair pace, punctuated by incidents and talking points - injuries, fights and apoplexy. Leaving at the end there was the sense of deep muscle exhaustion which comes with being drawn into something. It might not have felt like a derby, but at times it felt like a derby. My daughter complained that her feet hurt, which is exactly how it should be.<br />
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Complaints of our demise or how we should be beating 'teams like Wycombe' are overstated. More often than not this season we have played well, but we lack an additional dimension. For all Ade Akinfenwa's absurdities, and he has many, he does one thing well. Which is standing still. But, like Peter Crouch, Kevin Francis or even Yemi Odubade, you accept his failures because if all else fails, you know the one dimension they have might break the deadlock.<br />
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We don't have that - a goal poacher, a battering ram, someone with prodigious pace. The closest we have is, perhaps Marcus Browne, but he can only play for a few minutes at a time. It meant that even with numerous chances, it was difficult to remember a chance we genuinely looked like scoring from.<br />
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But that said, there's an energy and effort that should still give us a good platform for the season. We just need to ease any tensions about relegation by scraping together a few points so that we can start looking up.<br />
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Whether it's a derby or not is unresolvable, but I'll always look forward to an Oxford Wycombe game, because above all else, it's a very fine fixture.Oxbloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02967021179480280905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28923417.post-21435959755980074182018-09-10T09:02:00.001+01:002018-09-10T09:02:21.692+01:00The wrap - Oxford United 1 Coventry City 2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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On the touchline before the Coventry game stood Michael Appleton working for TV, dressed in a suit which looked both immaculately cut and a fraction too small. It was a timely reminder of what once was.<br />
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Famously, Appleton, along with Darryl Eales and Mark Ashton focussed their attention on installing an uncompromising DNA into the club. If Plan A didn't work, there was no Plan B. They were mocked for it at first, but they were right ultimately.<br />
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The DNA of our current incarnation remains something of a mystery. With an hour of unremarkable football gone against Coventry, the game was drifting into a stupefying spectacle. Was that deliberate? The fact that Karl Robinson appeared content to allow our substitutes remain on the bench suggested it was. We barely threatened their goal and that seemed to be OK.<br />
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It didn't help that Robinson was absent from the touchline; his normal animated mania was confined to the gantry at the back of the South Stand. But, having reached the final third of the game with the score still 0-0 and little prospect of a breakthrough, it seemed he was happy with what he was seeing.<br />
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Of course, if you stand still, you risk others overtaking you; either by moments of uncharacteristic skill, or unpredictable freakishness; which is what happened when John Mousinho deflected a meek shot into his own net. Then Jonathan Mitchell got himself into a muddle, conceded a pointless penalty and we were 2-0 down. By that point, it was too late to take action.<br />
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What was the plan? Just to hold them? It hadn't been the plan against Accrington or Burton. Robinson kept with the team that played so well against Sunderland. But, that was a team built to contain as much as win; very typical for an away game. Jamie Mackie works hard, but he's not built to terrify defenders with his pace.<br />
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Perhaps the idea was that Marcus Browne was intended as the attacking threat, but Browne is raw so his delivery and dribbling can be erratic. You can't rely on him to deliver consistently. Ricky Holmes is the other threat, but we seemed reluctant to bring him into the game. James Henry, only really spluttered into life on occasions. But, despite this, we chose not to change anything.<br />
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It turns out Karl Robinson wasn't content with how we were playing. He fumed through his post-match interview. It's unfair to be too definitive based on a single interview, but he babbled on about the players not doing what they were told, something about their emotional state, he was like an articulated lorry trying to u-turn in a small neighbourhood cul-de-sac as he failed to answer some around some basic questions about individual players.<br />
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If there are problems that he struggles to articulate, how does he start finding a solution? <br />
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Does Robinson have a plan? Is there an intended DNA? Plenty of people rely on intuition and deal with the next problem in front of them. Flexibility is a virtue, but, if you lack a vision, then how do you know you're going in the right direction? How do you know you're solving your problems and not being overwhelmed by them?Oxbloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02967021179480280905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28923417.post-34638865018204324622018-09-02T08:29:00.000+01:002018-09-02T08:29:34.406+01:00The wrap - Oxford United 1 Sunderland 1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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We had a great week - first league win, beat Newport comfortably, drew Manchester City in the next round, then off to Sunderland. Former Premier League Sunderland. Do you know how big their ground is? Massive! They used to be in the Premier League y'know. I've seen them on the telly.<div>
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Then there were the Oxford connections; Stewart Donald and 'The Saviour' Charlie Methven. And, of course, Chris Maguire who has started his time at Sunderland 'on fire'. Everyone knows Mags and his ability to wind everyone up and stick it to them where it hurts. He'll just do that to us, won't he?</div>
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By Saturday, we'd almost talked ourselves into accepting a heavy defeat, so we'd focus on having a good day out - like visiting Middlesborough in the Cup a couple of years ago. Perhaps we were preparing for the worst. As Radio Oxford repeated constantly - 20 years ago we conceded seven there. Maybe we were protecting ourselves for another defeat just as things were starting to look up. Like the Manchester City game, defeat will mean nothing, and if you say that enough, you begin to believe it.</div>
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But, for their good start, Sunderland are a League 1 team for a reason. At the end of last season they were pretty much accepted to be the biggest shambles in professional football. Some clubs under-performed, other clubs failed, but they had excuses - lack of money, poor infrastructure. Not Sunderland, they should be able to sustain themselves as a competent Championship team as a minimum.</div>
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Sunderland's biggest problem is the culture of failure that has dogged them for years. Sure, Donald came in with a new positivity, debts were cleared, things appear to be re-setting. As was mentioned on Saturday, his plan was to replace the sun bleached pink seats at the Stadium of Light with new bright red ones. He replaced most, but not all by time the season started. It's a big job, bigger than he'd expected. It's almost symbolic of the challenge he faces. This is a big ship to turn around, everything that makes them big, is also a millstone - their history, a big expectant fanbase, players with Premier League experience on big wages. As we should know, you don't hit the bottom when you're a football club; you just keep falling.</div>
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Had Karl Robinson taken the same approach as the fans and media, we would have lost comfortably. But Robinson has always been a good disrupter. It's why people don't like him. Last week, he played a vital role in our win over Burton. At MK Dons he beat Manchester United 4-0. Even last year he nearly snatched points from Wigan away that nobody expected. If you can find weak spots and work on them then things can happen, and Robinson is relentless in that challenge.</div>
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When he announced Jamie Mackie up front and left Sam Smith and Jonathan Obika out, speculation was that we were going to defend front to back. But, I think he wanted Mackie's savvy and experience. If we could cut through the growing sense of positive satisfaction amongst the Sunderland fans and expose all the old insecurities, then perhaps we could get something from the game.</div>
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Likewise, Ricky Holmes isn't going to respect reputations, nor John Mousinho. James Henry has too much experience to be over-awed by a big ground. These players have made careers out of defying odds, about achieving more than they rightly should. </div>
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The disruption worked a treat; Shandon Baptiste is young enough to, perhaps, not think too much about where he's playing and what he's achieving as well. He's surfing on the early flush of success. Hopefully he won't take too much notice of what people are saying about him. It's all very unconscious at the moment, the biggest challenge comes when he become conscious of the expectations surrounding him. Marcus Browne is much the same.</div>
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What it made for was an conservative looking attack actually becoming a huge proactive threat. Sunderland fans were reminded of where they've fallen to, the players lost their discipline, only one of their midfield five avoided a card - Max Power's cynical red being crucial. It meant rather than defending deep, we could put pressure much further up the field, much to the disillusion of their fans. </div>
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Our biggest challenge is to keep the likes of Holmes and Mackie playing - I've never heard more talk about players needing injections to play than this season. The likes of Baptiste, Browne and Whyte need to keep working and ignore the hype. </div>
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More broadly, this is undoubtedly a game we'd have expected to lose. Instead, we've scraped back a point from the ones we lost earlier in the season. A couple more of those and with some of the biggest away days we'll face already behind us this year, things are looking far more positive than our league position suggests. And that might also play to our advantage in the coming weeks as teams under-estimate us. </div>
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Oxbloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02967021179480280905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28923417.post-89154916810480253602018-08-30T13:37:00.002+01:002018-08-30T13:37:28.573+01:00The wrap - Newport County 0 Oxford United 3<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I have stumbled across a quantum fact; it's a fact which exists in two apparently conflicting states simultaneously. It is both useless and useful at the same time.<br />
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Here we go - by the end of the season we will have played a team in every position in the table apart from our own. Therefore, the average position of an opponent in our division is 12.5 - right in the middle of 12th and 13th place.<br />
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So, by looking at the average league position of every team we've played so far we can ascertain whether we've had a difficult start or an easy start. The lower the number, the more we've played teams at the higher end of the table, the harder the start.<br />
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Including Saturday's game against Sunderland, the average position of our opponents to date is 7.5. Exclude Burton, in 21st, from that it's 4.8. The lowest possible average after six games is 3.5 (e.g. playing each of the top six). So we have had a excessively hard start. The next six fixtures is an average of 12.1 - much more civilised. The twelve games together 9.8 against a possible of 6.5, so still pretty tricky.<br />
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So we have had a very hard start, in fact it almost couldn't be harder. This will be much more, if not easy, then easier, in the coming weeks.<br />
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This is a useless stat because there are so many variables influencing it - the number of teams we've played, their relative short-term form, the mix of fixtures each team has played (opponents, home or away) etc. For example, the current top six may be the bottom six by the end of the season, meaning our 'difficult' start was, in fact, dead easy. It's also like the Higgs Boson, it is aloof; it sort of only exists as a useful fact around this time of the season when there have been enough games to do a reasonable calculation, but not too many to make all the variables too complicated. It is also useful when looking at run-ins.<br />
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It illustrates a broad point. Fans don't think about things in this way. We are, as they say, the greatest team the world has ever seen. Every team, particularly in the early part of the season, is there to be beaten. It doesn't help that at the start of the season that we have no benchmarks to judge fixtures against. It's different in the Premier League, but in League 1 club fortunes are volatile - at the start of the season it is impossible to predict if Portsmouth or Fleetwood, or Plymouth or Shrewsbury are going up or down this season.<br />
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So, crudely, we had a bad start against really difficult opponents. The opening four losses weren't without their casualties; several players were battered by fans for the poor performances. Rob Dickie, Luke Garbutt and Jonathan Obika all started against Barnsley, but have lost their place in more recent weeks.<br />
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Dickie and Garbutt are both relatively young - and I wouldn't assume Obika is immune to the criticism. Being compared to a wheelie bin on Twitter, as Garbutt was, is both damaging to the club and to the individual. People forget that he is starting a new job, in a different part of the country, with different people, with different pressures. In normal working life, it can take months to get a new employee functioning, in football, 90 minutes can be enough for people to start drawing conclusions.<br />
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So, while Shandon Baptiste has rightly been the centre of attention after his wonder-goal in the 3-0 win over Newport on Tuesday, the League Cup is serving an important role in re-building confidence amongst players who took a battering in the opening weeks of the season, in part due to the vagaries of the fixture schedule. Garbutt, in particular, seemed to be involved in everything, showing that he shouldn't be written off as a poor signing in the opening weeks of the season. Oxbloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02967021179480280905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28923417.post-444887821216429082018-08-28T09:46:00.003+01:002018-08-28T09:46:40.047+01:00The wrap - Oxford United 3 Burton Albion 1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When I listen to arguments about Brexit I often ask myself if those who voted leave genuinely believe it when the Daily Mail or Nigel Farage imply remainers are knowingly lying about them believing remaining is a better option. Or, is it just mock outrage to try and reinforce a more subtle point?<br />
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Similarly, how many people in the USA think there is a huge orchestrated conspiracy specifically against Donald Trump who is, in fact, completely honourable and truthful. Do his supporters actually think that somehow millions of people have got together to create a massive factory of lies?</div>
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I suspect the answer is there are far fewer conspiracists than we're led to believe. Most people exist in benign ambivalence. Asked to choose who governs us and we'll give an opinion, but whether we passionately follow the respective ideologies that sit behind them, I don't get any sense 'normal working people' do.</div>
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Onto football, we all possess a hatred for Swindon Town, but do people genuinely believe everyone in a red shirt is wrong or evil? I suspect most know that most Swindon fans are probably like them just with a different affiliation, we just enjoy playing our part in the pantomime.</div>
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On Saturday, there was no limit to Karl Robinson's histrionics on the touchline. Hands on head, hands in the air, arguing with the fourth official about whether standing in his technical area meant standing on or one inch behind the line painted on the ground. Does rational Karl Robinson genuinely believe this matters?</div>
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Again, I suspect not. He is either caught up in the moment, like all of us, as a way of releasing stress and tension. Being a manager is undoubtedly stressful, and the longer our losing streak went on, the most chance there would be that he would lose his job. People often argue that if we do a bad job in our regular work, we'd be fired. That's not really true - lots of barely competent people retain jobs regardless of what they do - in football, even competent managers lose their jobs on a whim.</div>
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Apart from stress, I suspect Robinson is playing his part in securing the victory, but not in the way we might think. During the first half on Saturday, Trevor Kettle chose to punish a series of 50/50 challenges rather than give the benefit of the doubt. What he perhaps didn't realise was he was awarding more of these challenges in favour of Burton, to the point where it was beginning to look very odd. The fans spotted it, Robinson spotted it, the players spotted it, and the anger grew. </div>
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At half-time, the players moved towards Kettle to complain. Nothing particularly unusual about that. Robinson flew onto the pitch towards the referee - with panicking security in tow - looking like he might punch him on the nose. But, rather than complain to the referee, he pushed his players away and told them to get down the tunnel. </div>
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This was a clever move; Kettle was left on his own with his linesmen still some way from the tunnel, flanked by security facing an invigorated home support. The boos were defeaning, I don't remember them ringing out so loudly. Kettle was suddenly faced with the reality that in the tough game to control, he may have got some of his marginal calls wrong. The 'performance' of Robinson and then the fans sent an unsubtle message about a subtle issue. I don't believe Kettle was consciously bias, it was just looking like that and the aggregated punishment we were receiving was far greater than the individual challenges deserved.</div>
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In the second half, he was faced with the option of continuing how he had been - calling things as he saw them - or unconsciously (or consciously) giving us a bit more leeway. If he had continued to give Burton the advantage, not only would be face the ire of the fans, but there are assessors in the stand who would start to question him. I don't know if he deliberately evened things up - I doubt it - but it may well have made him re-evaluate how he was making decisions.</div>
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Having conceded a demoralising equaliser, Robinson created the theatre that served to re-balanced the game. Lets face it; Burton weren't very good and we weren't fantastic, but with their threat increasingly muted, we were able to ease to our first points of the season. And thanks god. </div>
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Someone on the radio suggested that the half-time non-altercation could have been a turning point. For the game, yes. Perhaps for the season. Robinson took it upon himself to disrupt the flow of the game, which seemed to be following a similar pattern to Tuesday, helping shift the mindset, giving the players just enough space to perform.<br />
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It was a critical three points - we head up to Sunderland on Saturday and would be very happy with a point. The prospect of six games and no points would have seen us in deep trouble literally and mentally. That said, look at the table and by Saturday we'll have played Sunderland (2nd), Portsmouth (3rd) and Barnsley (5th) all away, plus Fleetwood (6th) and Accrington (8th) at home. In the next six, we'll be playing Coventry (16th), Wycombe (17th), Wimbledon (15th), Luton (10th) and Southend (11th) plus Walsall (4th). By that point we should have a clearer picture of the reality of our prospects. </div>
Oxbloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02967021179480280905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28923417.post-19466562132731122692018-08-23T16:58:00.000+01:002018-08-24T08:45:25.300+01:00The wrap - Oxford United 2 Accrington Stanley 3<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Success, it is said, is a fine balance between having enough confidence to believe you can achieve something and enough doubt to convince you to put in effort to achieve it. If you are too confident, you may not put the effort in, if you have too much doubt you’ll give up or you won’t start in the first place.<br />
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Performance-wise, I didn’t think Tuesday’s defeat to Accrington was too bad at all. I don’t have a benchmark this year, but it seems to me that Karl Robinson wants to play an intense, high-tempo game and in the main we achieved that. <br />
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But that kind of game carries risk; if you bomb forward and lose the ball, you’re susceptible to counter-attack. If you pass the ball quickly, one misplaced ball can cost you. If you close down quickly, mistiming can result in a foul. It is no riskier than, say, Pep Clotet’s or Michael Appleton’s approach.<br />
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With Clotet, the strategy was to draw teams on by retaining possession in midfield and defence before attacking at pace. In fact, the team would often get lost passing it along the defence and midfield, unsure of when to attack. While the players bought into Michael Appleton’s strategy of simply out-performing your opponents, sometimes we would be out-thought in the process. <br />
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So every strategy carries risk. The fact that we lost doesn’t invalidate the strategy. On Tuesday night, the players seemed to have confidence in the approach and bought into it. All over the pitch there were players stepping up, but the fact every step forward resulted in a step back eroded confidence. It wasn’t just the steps back, but the nature of those steps – an own goal and a penalty – like some higher being has decreed we should struggle. You got a sense of the deflation when the penalty was given, as Robinson said afterwards – it just feels like nothing is going right for us.<br />
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This should be short term, but we risk drifting into despondency, a loss of confidence that it’s not worth even trying. Karl Robinson’s post-match interview, I think, was designed to avoid that happening. Everyone did everything right, we were unlucky, if the players keep going they’ll be OK.<br />
On the pitch it’s important that senior pros like John Mousinho and Curtis Nelson step up to provide the leadership. I get a sense that Browne doesn’t lack for confidence and Whyte should be pleased with his start. Most areas had positives.<br />
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The most volatile group in all this, of course, are the fans, who stayed with the team and appeared encouraged with what they saw. It’s was quite different to the echo-chamber of social media where everything is bad and will continue to be. <br />
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I don’t think we’re far away from getting going, but looking at the upcoming fixtures against two teams relegated from the Championship, it’s important that we get a foothold on the season soon. Maintaining confidence won’t last much longer, and then it’s a long way back from Karl Robinson. Oxbloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02967021179480280905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28923417.post-83388336010547542422018-08-19T09:04:00.004+01:002018-08-19T09:04:47.983+01:00The wrap - Portsmouth 4 Oxford United 1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Inevitably, after Saturday's defeat to Portsmouth, someone on the phone-in reached for that standard explanation for any failure - NO PASSION. <div>
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Passion, like 'springboards' and 'momentum' are mainstays of any fans' explanation of form. Granted, it may be an alternative word to 'application' - the need to actually put effort into something - but ultimately, passion won't win games. There are about 7,000 people who passionately follow Oxford United every other Saturday - they are invariably useless at football.</div>
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So, what's going wrong?</div>
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Inevitably, after the Portsmouth result, Michael Appleton's name was being wafted around - after all, the guy is unemployed, can't we just go and get him and return to 2016? 2016 represents modern-Oxford's high watermark, its benchmark, it's our safe, happy place.</div>
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Indeed, 2016 is helpful in providing a reference point to analyse most things related to the club, but to simply want to go back there is unrealistic and therefore unhelpful.</div>
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So, where did it go so right?</div>
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Firstly, let's not forget, the Eales, Ashton, Appleton revolution took a year to materialise. 2014/15 was as bad as 2015/16 was good. While they were getting things right, there was a lot that went wrong including losing our first four league games (sounds familiar). At most other clubs, Appleton wouldn't have been given the time he was to get things right. </div>
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Second, there was funding - Darryl Eales had money, which he could access and was prepared to spend. He was close enough to the club's operations to ensure that the money, when needed, was available. Players, infrastructure, marketing - it wasn't so much about the amount of money that was spent - though that was inevitably a factor - it was more about the speed at which it could be accessed. </div>
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Third, Mark Ashton was an aggressively proactive chief executive. I confess, I didn't particularly like his schtick - especially in the early weeks. However, I briefly worked with someone who worked at a senior level with London Welsh who described Ashton as a 'nightmare' because if he wanted something, there was nothing to stop him getting it. He may have been a nightmare, but he was our nightmare.</div>
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And finally, we had a manager who understood the mechanics of modern football. Good scouting, sports science, short-term process goals, marginal gains. Whatever you want to call it, Appleton understood it, not only that, he studied it. He was given an unusually long time to get it right - but without that no manager would have achieved what he did with us. Even media-gobshite Robbie Savage admitted that new Arsenal manager Unai Emery will need at least three transfer windows to get things right, that's 18 months. Time most managers aren't given.</div>
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So this is, broadly, the formula we aspire to. Simply saying let's go back there seems an unlikely option - Darryl Eales had the funding to get us out of League 2, but a sustained challenge at League 1 seems unlikely. Mark Ashton and Michael Appleton's reputations place them squarely in the Championship - like many of the players they signed. We are simply too small for them at the moment.</div>
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Karl Robinson inherited quite a mess when he joined the club. There was the wreckage of the Pep Clotet experiment, coupled with a 10 week delay in getting his appointment over the line, in addition to Tiger's takeover. By this time we were in a relegation fight. You could argue that Robinson has had five months to get things right, but he was firefighting for a lot of that time. You could argue that the clock really only started when he secured safety last season, not when he joined.</div>
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There appears to be funding; Tiger has invested and in a lot of the right areas - training ground, youth set-up and the first team squad. Marketing has improved, including the strategy of building stronger links with the city; you may feel that town and gown shouldn't mix - but in terms of attracting investment, it seems ludicrous that we don't try to trade off the city's global reputation.</div>
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The problem seems to be the speed at which things happen. The training ground isn't finished and the club is living a nomadic life as a result, alongside this, signings have come in late. This is where I think there's a real weakness. For Mark Ashton's aggressive ambition, we now have Niall McWilliams - a largely silent, passive managing director. Is he demanding progress and funding, is he 'the nightmare' we need to get things done? It won't be wholly his fault; only Tiger has access to Tiger's chequebook, but the link between managing director and owner seems far too loose at the moment.</div>
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Which brings us to Karl Robinson. You sense Robinson's frustration that things are zipping along as he'd expect. Is it an excuse? Maybe, but I do get the sense he knows how to manage a football team. But, like Appleton before him, he needs the environment to be right to thrive. At the moment, it's not broken, it's just not functioning properly. He said as much on Saturday - they just have to get through this phase and things will improve. The risk is that players stop buying into the way of working and we find ourselves in another relegation fight.</div>
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The good news is that it can't get much worse. We won't lose every game and concede a bucketload for the whole year. The infrastructure, management and players are more than good enough to climb the table. What we don't know is what normal is from this squad. For everyone's sanity, the sooner we find out the better. </div>
Oxbloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02967021179480280905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28923417.post-25164005951019298992018-08-18T11:15:00.000+01:002018-08-18T11:15:21.968+01:00The wrap - Barnsley 4 Oxford United 0, Oxford United 0 Fleetwood Town 2, Oxford United 2 Coventry City 0<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I have to confess, I don't get a buzz from the new season. It disrupts my summer and messes with commitments I had to make before I knew the fixtures. Football in the summer, without a coat, is not football. I want to leave the ground when it's dark, desperate to get back to the car to put the heating on and thaw my fingers out. Football is my 'silence'; a routine that allows me to escape from everyday life, I prefer football when we're deeper into the season.<br />
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It wasn't always like this; when I was young we seemed to always be coming back from holiday when the season started. I remember sitting in the car as we gradually came into range of English radio as games were kicking off. The holiday had ended, but something much better was in its place.<br />
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Over the years things have changed. Clubs don't add a couple of players to their squad anymore; post-Bosman, teams are overhauled, so you have to get used to a load of new players. I keep up with our signings during the summer, but when they turn out for the first game of the season and can barely tell one player from another. Even the kit changes every year now, so each new season can feel like watching a completely different club. As I say, it's the routine and the constant of the fans that makes football fun, not the novelty of the new season.<br />
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Not everyone feels like this, of course, Twitter was buzzing with people who were buzzing about the new season. For them the season burst into life at Oakwell and the heavy defeat to Barnsley. This was followed by the defeat to Fleetwood. Not just Fleetwood, Joey Barton's Fleetwood. Suddenly we're bottom of the league and doom was settling in.<br />
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The reaction was like we were 15-20 games into the season. Bottom after two games is far from ideal, but nor is it terminal. Nobody wants to lose two games in a row, but it does happen - it just happens to be that these two games are the first two games.<br />
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I do think that we didn't have a great summer; it came together eventually with late signings and Karl Robinson has more than hinted of the upheaval surrounding the new training ground, but the process of gelling the team together starts now, where you'd prefer it to have started on the first day of pre-season training.<br />
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The win against Coventry in the League Cup has gave us some rest bite, but as with all cup competitions nowadays, you can't really judge anything because it's impossible to know how any team view cup competitions. Under Michael Appleton, every game was treated equally so cup and league games were approached with the same vigour, and mostly the same team. Judging by the number of changes made by Karl Robinson, he's perhaps taking a more strategic view. It's not exactly what the fans want to see, but one of the issues Appleton had was his teams running out of steam towards the end of the season - essentially as a result of being too successful in the cups. I'm not convinced the physical tiredness is that big an issue, but the mental fatigue takes its toll. If the objective is promotion or the play-offs, then discounting the cups maybe the best option.<br />
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We have a tough start to the season, which is perhaps being overlooked. We play all three teams that came down from the Championship, two away, inside the first month. The season doesn't really settle down until the middle of September when we face Wycombe, Walsall, Luton and Southend, we can only start to judge the team in October, by which point the squad will be more settled.Oxbloggerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02967021179480280905noreply@blogger.com0