The wrap - Oxford United 3 Burton Albion 1

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?

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?

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.

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.

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?

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

The new season often looks unfamiliar. Fans look refreshed, new shirts are worn, people are in shorts. Pitches are a lush, deep, green colour; benefiting from a couple of months loving preparation rather than the usual 48 hours of intense forking and watering.

There is a buzz of anticipation because months of football deprivation play tricks on the mind. We begin to believe that we cannot fail, forgetting that every other team is similarly preparing and determined to succeed.

In the stands, the singing area worked to a point; I suppose when you put yourself in a singing area there is an obligation, of sorts, to sing. During the first half it was noisy and vocal, although it couldn't be sustained. Expected, given the energy needed to sustain 90 minutes of noise and the result on the day.

On the pitch, players look leaner; hair cuts are sharp, Alfie Potter's beard seems to have become more proportionate to his face. Danny Rose looks like he's been taking some miracle dietary substitute you see advertised on Facebook, his tan looks like he's been attacked by a creosote spray. The players who last year looked like children, look like men, like they'd grown into proper footballers over the summer. The football is technically better - at least for a little bit. And, of course, there are new signings which I can't tell one from another.

On the touchline the familiar questionable tracksuits of Chris Wilder (frankly, I can't remember what Gary Waddock wore) were replaced by the suited Michael Appleton. Mickey Lewis was barely visible barreling around the technical area.

Nothing was more different than in the executive box. It was rammed full of suits wearing those garish yellow club ties. Some people I recognised, most I didn't. There were wives, girlfriends  looking like a lost wedding party. Some were self-consciously wearing Oxford scarfs which you suspect had been hastily purchased for the occasion. Were they investors? Officials? Or were they simply the family and friends of new regime offering moral support and coming to admire the owners' new toy? Where did they all come from? And, will they still be here in November?

The area was so full that when Burton rolled in their winner just before half time, the phalanx Burton suits rose as one in their seats, not on the front row of the box as is usually the case, but about 20 seats to the left towards the open end. They seemed to have been ousted by the hangers on.

Nathan Cooper reinforced the sense of renewal by announcing the arrival of the players with a bellow of 'A new era'.  Things were different, of that there's no doubt.

Different until a ball was kicked, that is. Then there was a distinct familiarity about it all - decent shape, good passing, no urgency and no goal threat. As a bloke near me said 'we won't concede many, but we'll score even less' which, by any measure, is a withering assessment.

Even after we fell behind and the game ticked past the hour there was no change of plan. We remained pathologically averse to crossing the ball.

Channel 4 once briefly ran a series called the Sex Inspectors where a couple of self-styled er, 'sex inspectors' would try solve the problems of couples whose sex lives were damaging their wider relationship. In one episode a couple had become consumed with role play, sex toys and dressing up. 

The programme's hook was for the experts to watch the couple in action and commentate on what was going on. If that sounds like fun, believe me it wasn't. In this one episode, the bloke spent 25 minutes meticulously lacing up his girlfriend's corset. It was all part of their 'game'. She was pulled and yanked about and told off for not standing still until she got bored and cold. His obsession with dressing her up in 'the right way' meant he completely overlooked the objective of actually having sex with her.

That was us on Saturday; we were so obsessed with shape and technique that we'd forgotten to score any goals. Even into injury-time nobody was prepared to launch the ball into the box in one last attempt to salvage something. I don't remember if the bloke and his girlfriend ended up launching the ball into the box to salvage something.

But, fans on the phone-in purred with appreciative sympathy. The ubiquitous 'Dougie', who might be one person, or perhaps, like Dr Who, lots of different people being a single character, carefully re-wrote history by claiming that Wilder and Lenagan would have come on and given excuses. To my mind Appleton's assessment of us dominating was way off the mark, not an excuse, but misleading nonetheless. We were just compliant in failure.

Some of this is politeness towards the new regime, and nobody is suggesting that Appleton shouldn't be given time, but a tame home defeat to Burton is not honourable in the way a cup defeat to a Premier League team might be. If you have ambitions of success, you don't want to lose any more than 3 or 4 home defeats in a season. The first game is very early to be giving away one of your lives and to do it so cheaply has to be a worry.

Mickey Lewis defies Newton's Law of Motion

Everyone thought that the Lewis/Meville combination was a safe pair of hands that could sustain the Wilder philosophy long enough to steer us through to the play-offs. It doesn't seem to be working out like that.

Nobby D lost his dressing room on Saturday morning. His Under 8s – who my daughter plays for – seemed to demonstrate the textbook definition of groupthink. Marshalling them into some form of productive training session seemed largely impossible.

The group are normally a happy and well disciplined lot under Nobby’s guidance, but early on it was clear that one or two had turned up in a bit of a scratchy mood. It was manifest in a lot of very low-level transgressions – smart-alec comments, answering back, playing with a ball rather than listening. Then, like ink being dropped blotting paper, the influence spread across the group.

I noticed it when my daughter came over for a drink. Generally she’s a bit of a follower and quite well behaved at football. A couple of the others had started squirting their bottles at each other and I could see a glint in her eyes and a change to her body language. To her delight, the rules of acceptability had apparently changed and the children were in charge.

Rather than absent mindedly dropping the bottle on my toe, as she’s wanton to do, she walked off with it; ready to join in the squirting game. I plucked it from her hands as she left and she shot off back to the group.

With almost nobody noticing, what was happening was a viral underground revolution that wrestled authority from Nobby’s hands into those of the group. Very Lord of the Flies.

Of course, managing an Under 8s team, Nobby is somewhat constrained by what he can do about it. There are parents watching and most children are there on a Saturday morning to enjoy themselves. Nobby gave them a stern admonishment at the end of the session and let it go in the hope that next week discipline will return.

On Saturday afternoon, against Burton, we started with apathy and listlessness. While Burton didn’t punish us initially, as soon as they found a gear, we found ourselves 2 and then nearly 3-0 down. The game was all bust lost within the first half hour.

The apathy was evident from early on. Perhaps it was the early spring sun, but we seemed to stroll onto the pitch and knock it around with little sense of urgency. Worse still, nobody was prepared to light the blue touchpaper. There was a distinct lack of leadership. Like with Nobby's Under 8s, it was as if the players had taken charge and that as a group they had become satisfied with their passive passing game. Nobody was prepared to tell them it was wrong - not even the manager.

Let's not wear rose tinted glasses, we were hardly rocket fuelled under Chris Wilder, but with him gone there appears to be a group-dynamic of some concern. Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion says that for every action, there will be an equal and opposite reaction. But does our squad have anything, or anyone, to react to or against?

Jamie Cook once described Chris Wilder as being something like ‘a great manager but a terrible man’. But that distance may be just what is needed. If a manager is too nice, too close to his squad, how can he make the hard, objective decisions that are needed to make a squad function?

Mickey Lewis has made a career out of being everyone’s mate – fans, players, management. He’s a reliable nice-guy. But does that mean we've lost the objectivity that comes with a manager watching from distance? If there's nobody correcting them, do the players start confirming each others’ behaviour as being right, even if the results are wrong?

Lewis’ post-match interview had an air of ‘shit happens’, a shrug of the shoulders, about it. This ability to roll with the punches has served him well over the 20+ years he's been around the club. But that shrug of the shoulders may well be spreading across the team. After-all, as Mickey says, there's always another game to play or another training session to get things right.

Cheltenham did little to change the perception of being leaderless. Lewis' response was almost trancelike; all we can do is work hard. But that was hardly the problem; Lewis gutted the midfield, putting Mullins in to add some steel along with Ruffels - a very similar player. With little creativity in the middle, we were reliant on the flanks, where stood James Constable who simply isn't built for playing on the wing. Only Williams offered any movement.

There just didn't seem to be a game plan; the players just needed to work hard. I've no doubt they did, but without any obvious direction.

The answer, of course, is a new manager, which by anyone's reckoning has proving to be a slow process. I don't buy the idea that we should get 'anyone' in, because that's currently what we have.

Damian Batt: One of Wilder's original golden generation.

Following a impressive win over Burton, it could be argued that Chris Wilder is in the best shape he's been in for years. The dawning of another golden era? Time will tell. But this peak comes in the same week that Damian Batt, the first of his original golden generation retired from full time football. 

Even the paramilitary wing of the Wilder Out campaign will have to admit that our manager is having a half-decent time of it at the moment. After our 2-0 win over Burton on Saturday, we're unbeaten in seven, nine if you count last season, with maximum points away from home and we're sitting comfortably second in the table.

It is sometimes difficult to remember what the club was like pre-Wilder. He, along with Kelvin Thomas, took a bloated mush and managed to use a key quality - our size - to our advantage. If Oxford were going to break out of the Conference, they needed to meet their own rhetoric and psychologically dominate the league. The result was a barrage of signings designed to meet that specific brief.

Of the team that eventually took us up at Wembley, Damian Batt, who retired from full-time football last week, was Wilder's first permanent signing. Of the Wembley team, Adam Chapman had come in on loan, James Constable was already in place. If you want to have an idea of the state we were in at the time, a YouTube clip of Batt's debut opens with the announcement that the club had been deducted 5 points for fielding an ineligible player - Eddie Hutchinson. The height of our incompetence and disjointedness.

The deduction ultimately put paid to our play-off chances, but in the final months of that season, Wilder's United created a template for how it was going to take on the Conference. The following summer, the Wilder/Thomas revolution truly rolled with singings of Matt Green, Jack Midson, Dannie Bulman, Mark Creighton and Ryan Clarke amongst others.

Batt was part of that new culture, the Conference is made up of three types of teams; those who are in chaos, those who are well organised and those who are well organised and have a striker who scores goals. With that paucity of quality; Batt's physical attributes; his pace and fitness, allowed him to maraud up and down the right flank, overwhelming and demoralising those who played against him.

It was during the 2009/10 season that he scored his only Kassam Stadium goal from open play; in some ways it summed up much of the season. It was a cold, grey Halloween day against a well organised Altrincham side. The best part of the season. We bludgeoned away at them, missing a penalty along the way, eventually in the second half, Batt stepped up and larruped the ball home; a frustrated hurrumph which finally put them to the sword.

I said at the time, "Come the day of victory, you will cover us in garlands and kiss us passionately on the lips, and celebrate us with us as one, but as much as we will tell you the stories of Damien Batt’s 20 yard drive, you will never know what we’ve been through."

Batt was part of the first generation of tweeters, which galvanised his relationship with the fans. He came over as intelligent and articulate as those coming from non-league football often do. He built up a reputation as one of the good guys; something that proved increasingly important during the season's wobble when the club wrestled to find a replacement for the injured Adam Murray.

Adam Chapman was that man, and Wembley happened. The following season, Batt continued to prowl the flanks of League 2. It was a season of giddy abandon, we had highs, like the 6-0 win over Bristol Rovers, but were more often than not sucker punched by teams with no more quality, but a bit more guile. The season could have gone horribly wrong had Wilder not signed Paul McClaren to bolster a soft midfield which had been stripped of Dannie Bulman.

Batt built a reputation that got him into the League 2 end of season team. That surprised some given that we'd been undermined by naive defending. But with his pace and fitness Batt, plus his ability to whip in a mean outswinging cross, he would have been enough of a pain to build a reputation amongst a sea of anonymous League 2 right-backs.

At the end of the season, Batt acknowledged that despite the accolade, his defending needed to improve. Chris Wilder concurred, signing Andy Whing, Michael Duberry and Tony Capaldi with a plan to create a more mature back-four alongside Jake Wright. It seemed like Batt's days were numbered. Capaldi missed the whole of his first season and Whing, after a shaky start, was detailed to fill in in the middle of the back four or in midfield. Batt continued as a first choice pick, albeit in a more shackled role.

Meanwhile, off the field, Batt's attention seemed to be turning to his next career; not joining the Herbalife bandwagon, he launched something called Alexander Dubell. I've no idea what that is, and I don't know what 'living life exclusively' actually is, I suspect I'm not really the target audience; anyone who can afford a £10k+ watch rarely needs a price discount to persuade them to buy.

Batt's final season came with the fog of injuries, poor pitches, hand-wringing and finger pointing. He continued to perform solidly in between comparatively brief spells of injury. But a clear out was looming. A clutter of loanees and short term deals were shelled, stars who'd lost their shine moved along. Batt didn't seem to have done much wrong, so it was a bit of a surprise when his name was included on the list. The reason seemed to be little more than it was time for a bit of a refresh.

A move to Vancouver Whitecaps seemed to be on the cards, but for some reason that didn't materialise. Talking about having some great offers, which couldn't have been that great given he turned them down, he announced his retirement and then promptly turned up; part-time, at Eastleigh, playing some way below where he should be, you'd think.

It's difficult to place Batt in the great scheme of things. He should always be remembered as one of the brave that took on the club and its demons and helped to turn it round. As an early adopter of that new culture, he gains extra points for not caving in during those formative months. Perhaps he doesn't realise how deep a hole he managed to dig us out of. For that he'll always be welcomed back to the Kassam.

Time to press the panic button?

I have to confess I had my first Wilder wobble after the heartless 4-0 defeat to Burton on Saturday. The results aren't going our way, the manager's position is uncertain; he's either being sacked or moving to Coventry. The board is in transition with Kelvin Thomas and Jim Rosenthal standing down, and the fixture list looks uninspiring. What have we got to look forward to? Where are the wins? Where's the derby? What is going to spring us out of our malaise? I can only see a procession of tough games. Are we going to trudge through the season only to end up in mid-table meaninglessness? That's not why we support football clubs.

Football is escapism, we seek it because it give us something different to our normal lives. Everything else in our lives demands certainty. Our jobs are process driven, we want security; job security, financial security. Football is our unpredictable wildcard, our release, an opportunity to satisfy our animalistic urges. It is one of football's great paradoxes; those who succeed in achieving predictability, notably the Premier League, are chastised by traditionalists for ruining excitement. And yet it is the traditionalists who constantly call for more sensible and rational thinking in the game. So do we want excitement or predictability?

When, as now, there seems so little prospect of excitement, we agitate to generate some. We like to target the manager to try and shake things up. There is the frisson of excitement; the period of speculation where, in full fantasy-manager mode, we pick a realistic, but attached, target like Paul Tidsdale, or a unrealistic and unattached target like Harry Redknapp. Then you end up with someone with a moderate, occasionally good, occasionally rubbish track record. He inherits a team low on confidence and form and criticises, without risk, the previous regime's methods. I remember during the Kassam years, each manager coming in to criticise the players' lack of fitness, for example.

Fundamentally, the new manager has the same resources to play with; things don't change significantly. We then criticise and agitate to replace the new man (or even bring back the original manager, who with the blurring of time has returned to his previous state of being a legend). So many clubs fall into that cycle, it's so tempting to do it to brighten up our sorry lives. But is it the answer?

Is changing the manager really going to solve the problem? And more to the point, what the hell is the problem in the first place? And don't say it's the fact we concede too many goals and have just gone four league defeats in a row. That's not the problem, the defeats are the result of the problem.

We're missing the players that Chris Wilder brought in to add quality to the squad; he doesn't have Whing or Duberry in defence, Davis or (until Tuesday) Leven going forward, he hasn't had Cox. These are all his signings; good signings and they're all injured. Is that bad luck? Presumably it's possible to put together an algorithm that will predict when multiple factors converge to create form like we've got in the situation we're in. Or is it bad management? Is it wholly Wilder's fault? In other words, if you took Wilder out of the equation and put in a replacement, are the injured players suddenly going become available? I remember the charmless David Kemp saying after he was sacked that he wasn't going to take it to heart, because changing the manager hadn't worked in the past and it won't work in the future. Now, David Kemp is the worst manager we've ever had, but he was right, wasn't he? Will a new manager, playing to different tactics turn this squad into league champions? I can't conclusively be sure.

Is it a bigger issue? The policy of signing proven, older, players who are therefore more injury prone, without the infrastructure to keep them on the pitch. Is that the problem? Is it a bigger strategic issue; the focus of signings over science? Isn't that a board consideration; how much do you spend on players, support of players and the business that funds the show? That's not Chris Wilder's responsibility, at least not wholly, that's done higher up. So is it a board issue? Moreover, isn't that being dealt with? The board changes could conceivably be an attempt to deal with a deeper problem and there is already a stated commitment into investing into sport science.

The Greiner growth model says that it is inevitable that organisations hit crises as they grow, and perhaps that's the problem; a growing pain. He talks of a 'crisis of control'; where delegating responsibility results in growth that is too quick and out of control. What results is a tightening of control; is that why Lenegan is at the head of the table in the board room? He's managing the readjustment? If this is an inevitable wobble, then we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water and sack everyone involved because it satisfies our frustration and discomfort.

We can comfortably demonise the manager, it's a common thing to do. That's what most clubs do; and yet most clubs are badly run. So, do we want to follow the pattern of others just because it's the way football has always done it?

I don't know, on one hand, Wilder's position seems to be weakening, on the other hand, I can't definitively say that his replacement will provide the solution. And is it even fair to judge him on four league games of which three were away? And, this is our (equal) best start to a season since we returned from the Conference.

Many have already made their mind up, but as it currently stands; I would argue that this difficult early season was predictable. We have three home games in the next four. The opponents will test all our credentials; can we dispose of a lesser team like Wimbledon? Can we compete with a high flyer like Gillingham? And can we develop the resolve to compete with Rotherham? The next 18 days will tell us a lot more, I think.

Oxford United 2 Burton Albion 2

Your boss calls you into his office. He’s looking at some sales figures. You’ve been with the company for nearly three years, you joined when they were on their knees, but in that time you’ve improved those figures year-on-year.

He looks up and asks you how sales are this month. A little below budget, you say, not the worst you’ve had in the last year, but broadly on par.

He fires you on the spot.

Would this not strike you as a) a little unfair and b) an act of complete madness? This is effectively what those questioning Chris Wilder’s position are suggesting following the draw with Burton on Saturday.

The pundits claim that football is a results business. This is just a way of building a wall that creates the myth and legend of football and the magic and genius of its exponents. Name me one business not built, in some way, on results? But, what other business judges its performance over just 90 minutes? Surely it’s better to judge a manager on a full season?

I accept that you can’t wait until the end of each season to make a full assessment of a manager’s performance. Sometimes you’ve got to cut your losses before your season and, perhaps, your very existence is condemned.

Gut feel sure as hell isn’t a good measure. How about a 46 game rolling points total? That way you smooth out short-term blips in form and hot streaks and get a much better feel for overall progress. Well, in the first 46 games following promotion (including cup games) we accumulated 63 points.

In the 46 games up to and including Burton on Saturday we accumulated 64 points. We were 5 points off the play-offs last year, that means we’ve clawed back 20% of the points that would make the difference between a par finish and the play-offs. And that 46 game sequence includes a 3 and a 5 game losing streak. Moderate form to will see us much further ahead in terms of the overall target of the play-offs and promotion.

So the statistical trend is upwards, Wilder is making progress, why is his position being questioned?

Yellows 3 Burton 0

“On the opening day of the season Darren Moore had James Constable in his pocket. IN. HIS. POCKET” repeated Nick Harris on Radio Oxford like the bloke in the pub who has stumbled across a tactical insight and now thinks he’s Brian Clough.

Well, seven months later and Constable has clearly survived the attrition of the season better than Moore. Not really a surprise given that Moore is shifting a 36 year-old 6’ 2” frame around and giving away a decade of wear and tear to Constable.

Constable used his lower centre of gravity and Moore’s hefty bulk and lack of mobility to turn and twist the centre back to the point where he made his critical mistake to give away the penalty and gracefully leave the scene of his crime, beaten and frustrated.

He was instrumental in Tom Parkes’ sending off too. His mood was to agitate and hassle, lean into tackles and draw fouls from the opposition. I don’t know whether you could actually call this ‘playing well’, but it is effective and completely legitimate. OK, he ends up getting involved in a lot of shoving and finger pointing and argues the toss too much, but he was as much a match winner as the goalscorers.

Apparently last week Graham Westley offered a briefing to Paul Peschisolido on how to beat us. If true, it seems that the key piece of advice was to make the game as niggly as possible. From the ongoing argument between Chris Wilder and their assistant manager Gary Rowett on the touchline to the various shove-fests on the pitch.

However, where we seemed aghast at Stevenage’s cynical approach, we took Burton’s version of the rough stuff in our stride and used the energy it created to our advantage.

It still needed some cool heads though, and both Harry Worley – a titan under pressure throughout – and Jake Wright who broke up scuffles and exerted his authority on Steve McLean when he wouldn’t hand the ball to Tom Craddock for his penalty, showed a maturity that wasn’t so evident earlier in the season. The question is, has it come too late?

Burton Albion 1 Yellows 0

OK, better it was, good enough it wasn’t.

Though ultimately defeated, there was clearly an aim to be cannier than we’ve been this season against Burton. The high pressure attacking game was sacrificed for something more considered. The first half, set up in a kind of 4-1-4-1 formation, it looked like the aim was to take the sting out of Burton’s passing game. This, perhaps, providing a platform to open up a little as the game settled and their players tired. Rope-a-dope.

We didn’t look comfortable sitting back as a compact unit, but despite the occasional scare, when the defence opened up alarmingly, Ryan Clarke’s role was usually to mop up a misplaced final ball rather than make another miraculous flying save.

Second half, without truly threatening; we started to pull them about a bit. We looked comfortable and good for a draw (albeit a tedious one) before conceding from another looping right wing cross to the far post. Is that the fault of Tonkin who was stationed there; or Worley and Creighton? Who knows, but it appears to be a weak spot.

We’ll not fully know who was rested, injured or dropped until Saturday at the earliest, but in making changes to both personnel and formation, Chris Wilder clearly knows he’s got to find a formula that works for us at this level.

In the stands there was sniping with songs about Jack Midson. Read the messageboards and you’ll read posts from people who not only think he should leave, but have thought it since [enter earliest game you can possibly imagine].

You’re on safe ground in attacking a manager, one day they will leave, usually under a cloud. In attacking him, you can be pretty certain that one day you’ll be proved ‘right’ that he was no good. This risk free prescience probably fills a gap in their sorry lives.

But Wilder will feel the pressure to change things more than anyone. He deserves the space and respect to make those decisions. Nobody should under-estimate what he’s achieved with a club saddled with a decade-long legacy of failure. If anyone deserves time to work it out, it’s him.

We know that he can over-analyse, as was evident in the post-Christmas blip last year, but given space and time, he’s a good man who will work to get it right. Putting pressure on him to make snap decisions is not likely to make the solution come any sooner.

Burton Albion 0 Yellows 0

To appease Sarah for coming 5th in a local newspaper competition to collect tokens to win a wedding, Graham asked his girlfriend of 10 months to marry him anyway. And so they did. Graham subsequently left Sarah weeks later only to return occasionally ‘drunk and with curry down his front’ for casual sex.

She eventually fell pregnant and Graham, under a sense of misguided obligation, returned to his new bride to start afresh. “A wedding doesn’t mean anything, anyone can write something on a bit of paper can’t they?” said Sarah with knowing gravity, as if we should listen to a single word that dummkopf says.

Such was Channel 4’s Newlyweds - One Year Itch about the immediate aftermath of a wedding, a salient series of lessons on the perils of putting too much emphasis on a single event.

The Resurrection screamed the brilliantly portentous banner from the Coors East Stand Terrace at the Pirelli Stadium. A rebirth, some think, that will see us storm League 2 like Dagenham, Exeter, Rushden, Hereford and Cheltenham before us. Not only that, we will then pick up the Blackpool story and race right through the Premiership for an embarrassing relegation, eyeball bleeding debt and liquidation at the hands of HMRC.

Now, if we become a club synonymous with following an apocalyptical quest full of myth, mystery and magic existing only in our imagination, then that’s fine by me. If the Premiership is all corporate foreign owned franchises, then I’m off to do a bit of dragon slaying.

That said, the 0-0 draw with Burton was a very sensible and sober start to whatever foolhardy mission we’ve embarked on. This is OK; all good missions should start with a relatively harmless early skirmish that doesn’t kill you but gives you enough encouragement to carry on towards the fiery abyss.

Burton Albion 0 Yellows 1

Now, I do understand how the media works. How it distills complex multi-layered stories into a simple central narrative fit for half interested punters who, ultimately, pay its bills (let’s face it, it’s not you and I, because we’re usually at the match).

So, I understand why Setanta’s central theme yesterday was all about Burton and ultimately its failure. The transition from ‘non-league’ (for this read a non-competition) to football league is the greatest in English football and I understand that this makes good airtime.

But it would it have been too much to acknowledge that a sixth of Burton’s record crowd were not there to celebrate their (surely) imminent ascent. Or that Adam Chapman’s goal was from a drawer someway beyond non-league. That, perhaps, something is happening at Oxford that is good and exciting.

Or perhaps it would have been nice to talk to some Oxford players or staff after the game. Or, as a minimum, perhaps they could have blamed Burton fans for the post-match pitch invasion instead of claiming it was irate Oxford supporters.

Yup, the Conference and its devil mouth piece hate us. Love the money it makes from our profile, but hate us. We are jumped up privileged university students who are being rightly spanked for the ‘crimes’ of being jumped up privileged university students. Like a bunch of boorish toffs, we travel the country expecting others to roll over and let us take their young. But, hah, good, solid, hard-working ‘proper’ non-leaguers made up of postmen and plumbers being dragged up by their boot-straps are rubbing our snooty noses in it.

These stereotypes are convenient; it is widely ignored that Burton are more stable than us and that this all but assured their promotion from day one. In this sense our turnaround is more remarkable than their promotion. The results, of course, have been an important factor but the financial difficulties, points deduction, the fan revolution and the sheer bloody legacy and expectation make this a story richer and more intriguing than that of the champions. Not that Setanta will ever acknowledge that, that would spoil the story.

We will forever be the bete noir of the Conference. Next season we will compete against toughened non-league perennials and ex-league victims of incompetent and criminal administrations (unlike us, of course). Our story and our success will only ever be for us alone.

Altrincham 1 Yellows 0, Yellow 2 Burton Albion 1

In the car park there was a transit van painted like the Dream Machine – yes, it seems that the mystery surrounding Friday’s fire attracted Scooby-doo and the gang. You just know it was Firoz Kassam in a rubber fright mask. He would have got away with it if it wasn’t for those meddling kids…

To stretch an analogy to breaking point, the biggest mystery of all has yet to be solved. How can you lose to Altrincham and then dominate and win against Burton – the team I have down as favourites for the title.

Currently, my thinking is pace – we have, for the first time, a team that enjoys playing at the Kassam. It enjoys playing a high tempo, expansive game. Murray spreads the play, Haldane, Yemi and Deering prowl the flanks, Constable and Guy pull defenders all over the place. One of the reasons Phil Trainer has had a goal-rush is because he’s been able to exploit the space being created behind the front two.

The problem, then, is guile. When pitches are small and teams are compact, breaking them down is going to be difficult with the personnel we’ve got. I’m not necessarily suggesting that we need more creativity in midfield – Adam Murray is pretty capable at mixing up his passing. The key, I think, is in the efficiency of set pieces. When we gain territory, we’ve got to make it count better than we do currently. Oddly, our season may be defined by the number of goals our centrebacks end up getting.

Us 0 Burton 3

Just because two things correlate, doesn’t mean that one thing is causing the other. So, it may be true that teams lower down the league have more borderline decisions go against them, but that doesn’t mean teams are made poor by bad refereeing decisions. Derby County, for example, are not a Champions League contender on a bad run.

Likewise, just because the big teams have run-out music (Manchester United – This is the One by Stone Roses, Arsenal - Right Here, Right Now by Fatboy Slim), doesn’t mean run out music makes the game anymore exciting. The recent switch at the Kassam to Guns and Roses’ clarion call – ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ does not make the ground, in any way, a jungle - as yesterday’s lame defeat proved.

Let’s face it; if you and I can’t wait for the season to end, and Darren Patterson can’t wait for the season to end, it is difficult to expect the players to care too much about what happens in these games.

But they’re professionals, you say, they’re paid good money, you say – and you’re right (though the money probably isn’t as good as many perceive). But, as everyone knows when things are going bad at work, the fact you’re a professional and being paid is not always enough to make you care. As a fan, the motivation for wanting to win – the cultural programming that aligns our status with that of our chosen club, the time and money we’ve wasted as punters – is different to the players; to them it’s just a job.

So like kids having a kick around in the park, there was a lot of enthusiasm at the start of yesterday’s game and we looked pretty good. But as soon as we went behind it was apparent there was little point in trying to claw it back. We’re just a team idling towards the end of the season. Everyone was just waiting for someone to shout ‘next goal wins’ so we could all go home. Next season the results it may be worse, they may be better, they may be the same – but it is likely that the input – the effort, in particular, will be completely different. As awful as yesterday’s result was, it won’t have much of a baring on how we shape up for next season.

Burton 1 Us 2

A bloggers' pressure is that feeling that you have to find something to say. A football blog waits for no man, one game comes and you need to write up your thoughts before another beckons. The pressure, I'm sure you can tell, is almost unbearable.

The Setanta deal offers a new pressure for the club this season. We appear to be Setanta regulars, the Thursday scheduling invariably means the next game will move to Sunday. We're going to be put into the position of always playing catch-up.

During the Glory Years, we always seemed to have games in hand; which was considered a good thing. Nowadays we seem to have a habit of crumbling under that kind of pressure. Going into games knowing what result is needed is not good for us.

Needing a win is one thing, but one suspects its where there's an opportunity to extend a lead or make up some ground where we'll really foul up. Certainly that seemed to be the case last year.

That said, we're sitting on six points following Sunday's 2-1 win over Burton when I'd have been happy with four. There's still a lot of tests ahead; we probably won't have a decent idea of what kind of force we are until we've finally got through the absurd situation of eight games in September. Just to get that into perspective; we won't play that many games in October and November put together. This early sprint for positions could get ugly.

Burton: men swear

A totally featureless game yesterday. Nick Harris et al were harping on about how desperate we are and how nail biting it all is, but they've got airtime to fill. There's little to fear in the play-offs apart from ourselves. Burton's performance was typical of all the play-off contenders; organised, reasonable approach play, no punch. There were 15 points available to the six main play-off contenders yesterday and just 8 were picked up. This is a league not blessed with consistency.

It was difficult to judge our own effectiveness given the tactical impotence that resulted from the injuries to Burgess, Johnson and Quinn. We do know, however, that we can play, we don't concede much, and sometimes, just sometimes, we really can let rip. Finding the magic formula to make that all come together on the right day is key, as Chris Hargreaves mentioned, it may simply be the carrot of Wembley is enough to raise our game.

Speaking of which, was there a air of dissent in Hargreaves' post match interview? His comment was that we need a settled team and system, and stop chopping and changing. He also mentioned the dropping of Carl Pettefer, which seemed an extreme decision - unless he was rested; it just wasn't clear.

I've got to agree; throughout the season we've been effective as a 4-4-2, 5-3-2 and 4-3-3. Every player has had their purple patch. We've a decent squad with obvious weaknesses, but it's now time to settle on a way of playing. These players aren't good enough to play in a squad rotation system. March is out the way, the title is decided. The final month is now the time to bed a system in.

It's possible Jim Smith is deliberately changing things to see how partnerships work out and to get match sharpness up; particularly up front. He may already have a firm idea of how he's going to play April and May; even though it didn't look like it throughout March. Now is the time to settle. For me, we've got to start with Yemi and Duffy up front; for no other reason that over the season they've been the most effective. Zeboski and Robinson can come off the bench depending on the progress of the game. Zeboski didn't look great yesterday, but, in part, that was because he was involved. He doesn't look a 90 minute player - though again, he may only be playing 90 minutes for match sharpness. He may well be most effective coming off the bench.

Mr Smith, the decision is yours.