The wrap - Charlton Athletic 1 Oxford United 1

Spoiler: I'm not going to talk about Charlton or another decent point or Gavin Whyte's wonder-strike.

Sometimes you just can't win. The club have announced a one-off limited edition shirt for the 125th anniversary game against Shrewsbury 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?

No, the shirt is from a standard template which makes it both 'boring' and 'overpriced', and therefore 'a rip off'.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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; in fact, someone has. 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.

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.

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 Oxford United Kit History 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.

The Wrap - Charlton Athletic 2 Oxford United 3

In a round about way, I was talking to some friends about mortality on Saturday night. Specifically we were saying how we hope our children find something they can enjoy into adulthood. It's easy to give up on things you do for no other reason than fun when life's tedious priorities take over. We pondered whether the couple across the road, deep into their 80s, ever regret the time they've wasted on trivialities as they face the reality that every day could conceivably be their last. If we were more aware of our mortality, would we give up the things we love so easily?

My sister gave up singing for the best part of 30 years before joining a choir recently. Singing, which she had done at school, was trivial compared to her job, family and bills and so it simply fell off the radar. Someone suggested she might like to join a local group and it turned out that she loved it so much she realised that she'd grossly under-estimated the value of simple enjoyment.

Someone once described me as having an 'impenetrable hobby'; she couldn't fathom the appeal of following a football team, less so one whose normal state was best described as 'failure'. She is entirely right on one level; supporting Oxford is an illogical nonsense, a waste of time and I should really focus on more doing more valuable things. On the other, it is the whole point of life itself.

Supporting Oxford is a golden thread, not only from childhood to adulthood, but also between different people who have chosen a similar path. We share a particularly esoteric collective consciousness built on layers of experience that means nothing to most, but everything to some. It is not life itself, but it does allow us to have a purpose, of sorts, to cling to.

To outsiders, our trip to Charlton was a meaningless Saturday afternoon fixture between two meaningless teams. But, for us there was a significance; this thing we are so invested in didn't look good; no manager, debutants all over the pitch, three players who had been on the verge of leaving, poor form, one striker replaced by another striker who was replaced by a 18 year-old winger playing his third league game. Everything seemed to be heading in the wrong direction, which was confirmed by going first 0-1 down, and then 1-2 with a minute to go.

Then Todd Kane popped up with an equaliser and Ryan Ledson drove home his 94th minute winner,  etching himself permanently into our collective memory. Results like Saturday's are what  bind us together. It reminded me of The Miracle of Plainmoor in 2011 when Chris Wilder made eight changes to his starting line-up and recalled Jack Midson from a loan deal days after he implied his time at the club was at an end. The result, a 4-3 away win, was little short of a miracle with Midson scoring a hat-trick. In the last minute Steve MacLean stood on the ball and saluted creating another one of those iconic moments.

I'm pleased that Ledson's had an opportunity to make his mark on the club. Had he left for Preston, history would have judged him differently. As much as fans have warmed to him, until Saturday he didn't a moment that defined him as an Oxford player, the 94th minute at The Valley gave him just that moment.

It seems that the club and Ledson have reached a mutually acceptable understanding of their relative roles and positions. Naturally, the club needs the player or the money, whichever it views as more valuable. Ledson will want to play at the highest level he can and earn as much as possible before he retires. It's a precarious balance which can easily tip into one where the club are seen as enslaving the player or the player as a mercenary. Having missed out on a move, he could have skulked around until the summer, but it seems, for now, he accepts his role is to play as well as he can. Presumably, barring something hideous, he'll leave over the summer with our best wishes.

It seems to be the case for Simon Eastwood as well, a move to Barnsley would have been ideal for him personally. However, it doesn't seem to have troubled him that it didn't happen. If the club can maintain stability when there is lots to destabilise it then it is in a healthier state than it appeared two weeks ago.

The contemporary model for a club is to have a robust infrastructure with a first team manager focussing on his specific first team role role. It brings more stability than when you have to transition from one Alex Ferguson all-encompassing style to another.

I hadn't really seen it this way, but perhaps Pep Clotet tried too hard to change the ethos of the club by bringing in his own players and his own style. Team selection on Saturday suggests that Derek Fazackerley was bringing the club back to the core strategy which brought success under Michael Appleton. Personally, I'm not troubled by the speed at which we bring in a new manager given that Fazackerley is around to provide that steadying hand.

The wrap - Bristol Rovers and Charlton

Bristol Rovers 0 Oxford United 1
You'll often hear people talking about us having aspirations to reach the Championship. It's where we belong, what we deserve. Looking objectively, most teams feel that their rightful level is slightly above that which they're likely to achieve. Tottenham have aspirations of winning the Champions League, Nottingham Forest of being a Premier League club, Eastleigh of making the Football League. As an outsider to those clubs, most people will argue that they might want to bring it down a peg or two.

Typically in order to break out of your natural position, something extraordinary has to happen - for example, Salford's investment by the Peter Lim or Manchester City's takeover by Sheik Mansour. For most clubs, this will never happen, and so, in the main, your normal level is one below where you'd like to be.

Where you believe our natural level is may be defined by your age. If you're an Oxford fan in your forties, for example, you'll have seen us in the Championship and can envisage us being back there. Maybe if you're in your 20s, your formative experiences have been of the Conference and League 2, and League 1 might represent us punching at a level above our natural weight.

But, if you want to benchmark our progress, then look to teams like Bristol Rovers. In the last 30 years we've been in the same division 18 times, and only two divisions apart on five occasions. Rovers represent a kind of parallel us, if we perform better than them, then we're ahead of 'normal' us, perform worse then we're behind where we should be. Like the football equivalent of a tracker mortgage.

So, the win on Saturday was another tick in the box of progress. We are outperforming our norm, not conclusively so, but as a one-off test. The result has us back among teams who genuinely might  aspire to be in the Championship next season. The next three games, against Charlton, Rotherham and Fleetwood should go a long way to confirm whether we're slightly ahead of the norm, or genuinely pushing up to where we feel we deserve to be.

Oxford United 1 Charlton 1
When the news came through that Craig Shakespeare had been sacked by Leicester, I searched my soul for a reaction to the news that Michael Appleton's job was suddenly under threat. The thing was I couldn't find anything.

It's not that I don't feel sympathy for him, he's found himself, once again, at the helm of a listless ship, one which has had three managers in three seasons, each has delivered a miracle of sorts (Nigel Pearson avoiding relegation, Claudio Ranieri winning the title and Craig Shakespeare taking them to the Champions League quarter final). Each has been sacked within months by unforgiving owners. You can't not feel some sympathy for Appleton's predicament given his experiences at Portsmouth, Blackburn and Blackpool.

And if I was forced to watch only one season for the rest of my life, it would be our promotion season in 2015/16. Chances are we will never experience the likes again. We should be eternally grateful for that and for Michael Appleton dragging us out of the dark ages.

But, could Michael Appleton sustain what he did at Oxford for much longer than he did? Finding players for a pittance and selling them on for millions, while still building the club and moving it forward? Last year did feel like we were reaching the peak of our potential, that had we been promoted to the Championship, that it would have been a step too far and that we were performing on the edges of what we could hope to achieve.

In truth, I doubt it we could have kept going in this way. Initially, I felt his departure was a significant blow, but while it was sad to see him go and bring to a close a particularly exciting era, now I'm not as sure. With hindsight, maybe Oxford didn't need Appleton as much as Appleton needed Oxford.

Under Pep Clotet we're beginning to look more robust, more at home against those we aspire to finish above. Charlton, like Bradford, looked a very good team and we comfortably competed with them. But, not only do we now have a settled team and clear options coming from the bench, there is more depth in the squad. Under Michael Appleton we relied heavily on youthful exuberance and talent, now we have John Mousinho, James Henry, Wes Thomas, Simon Eastwood and others; all have the experience to manage and think through games in a way we haven't been able to previously.

We also have a steel that we haven't seen before. Last season, and earlier this, we were being bullied out of games, but Tuesday was intense, blood and thunder with not an inch given, and yet we competed and beyond that, we thrived.

It is possible to want two competing things simultaneously; I would love to relive the Appleton era and by extension I hope that he does well, but I think we've moved on and, if we haven't reached it yet, we are moving into a better place under the new management.
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Charlton and Chesterfield wraps - Charlton Athletic 0 Oxford United 1, Chesterfield 0 Oxford United 4

Hidden within the guts and glory of our FA Cup defeat was an uncomfortable truth; we were suddenly on a losing streak. Not only that, we were facing three more away games and, therefore, weren’t that far away from finding ourselves in a slump.

This wasn’t exactly new, last year between 10th January and 2nd February we played six games four of which were cup games. We beat Swansea and Millwall – both memorable results - but then lost to Millwall and then to Blackburn. In addition, we fell to a painful league defeat to Bristol Rovers. We then lost two home games on the bounce for the first time, both to promotion rivals. By the end of February we’d accumulated a giant-killing and booked a Wembley appearance but we were on the brink of physical and mental exhaustion that threatened to derail the whole season.

The year was stabilised by the most unlikely player – Jordan Bowery. Bowery scored in five consecutive league wins from late-January to the end of February. When the story of that promotion season is written Bowery will get little more than a few paragraphs, but he was crucial in helping set up the run-in and promotion.

The stakes aren’t quite as high this year – I don’t think anyone is expecting promotion - but we didn’t want the season to fizzle out. Wins against Charlton and Chesterfield leave us just four points from the play-offs. Conor McAnely, who has looked a little lost in his cameos at home, has suddenly changed the whole complexion of the season. It’s possible that McAnely will become this year’s Jordan Bowery scoring key stabilising goals at a crucial time. Maybe he’ll even become this year’s Kemar Roofe, who knows?

That said, it’s debatable as to whether a charge for the play-offs is truly desirable. With games in hand, the play-offs are in our hands, but it’s questionable just how ready we are as a club to play Championship football. Any run-in involving the play-offs – whether it ends in success or failure – will be hugely intense. It will mean the club will have played something like 120 games – including many many big ones - in two years. Great for the fans, exhausting for people like Liam Sercombe and John Lundstram and maybe even Michael Appleton. If we did manage to get promoted, we will suddenly be presented with a whole new world to deal with, are we really ready?

Another year and a lot of this year’s squad will be reaching their physical maturity and maybe even the stadium issue will be sorted out and so we will be much better position to deal with any new challenge. Dilemmas around a promotion charge are a nice problem to have but, perhaps, it’s a bridge too far at the moment?

Weekly wrap - Oxford United 1 Charlton Athletic 1, Southend United 2 Oxford United 1

Manchester is a curious place. As a result of its rebuilding following the bombing in 1996, the centre is typical of a modern, prosperous city full of cafes and bars and high end shops.

But, drive a short distance in any direction it appears to be surrounded by a ring of depravation. The roads become rutted, the houses look run down, there are shops clinging to dear life and people wandering around who look desperate. Less claustrophobic than London, you can see the stratification; the centre, the depravation, then places like Media City, Old Trafford, the Etihad and the Trafford Centre punctuating the skyline. Suddenly, you’re in the countryside and we’re back into prosperity again. As a result, it is very difficult to work out whether Manchester is thriving, struggling or whether it simply has a unique culture all of its own.

League 1 is much the same, last week we were at MK Dons, on Saturday it was Charlton, next is Bolton Wanderers. All teams with large stadiums and fans, and in the case of Charlton and Bolton, bigger reputations. But all three are on a downward trajectory.

And yet, League 1 remains ‘lower leagues’ like a big team graveyard. Next month we play Coventry, 1987 FA Cup winners playing in a stadium with over 32,500 seats, but they haven’t finished in the top six of any division for 46 years. It looks very likely they will be playing League 2 football next year; a big team with an abject history; very League 1.

In such a situation it is difficult to know quite where we fit. Before the game against Charlton, radio played a clip of the last time we beat them fourteen years ago. Jefferson Louis scored the decisive penalty in a League Cup shoot-out. Jerome Sale makes a comment about Louis having been in prison and earning £90 a week. Charlton, at the time, were the envy of most teams; successful, but grounded. The difference between us and them was obvious, now less so.

On Saturday we were pretty evenly matched. Their penalty looked far less controversial than the radio seemed to imply afterwards. The impact of Kane Hemmings was encouraging given that he has looked under-powered this season. I’m not sure, however, if people appreciate the role that Ryan Taylor made in softening up their defence to allow the game to open up a bit more when he went off. As usual, the phone-in simplified the issue – Hemmings should play in place of Taylor because he looked a goal threat and Taylor didn’t. It’s not a wholly unfair point, but I think Hemmings is a threat, in part, because Taylor did a lot of groundwork for him.

Tuesday, and Southend, came very suddenly and Edwards got grabby again. He must be a nightmare on a packed dancefloor – all hands. People have started talking about Southend being a bogey team and a curse, which is, of course, completely irrational. The main issue is that if you begin to believe it, then the likely response is not to re-focus and go again, but to believe that there is some sort of higher power at work and give up.

It all comes back to mind set – League 1, like Manchester, is probably best not compared to other places, but simply that it is a netherworld in itself. We will face a whole range of teams; big ones heading downwards, small ones heading up and others simply stuck in the division’s orbit. It is what it is, and we are what we are, the more we become comfortable with that idea, the more successful we’re likely to be.

It's not me, it's you - have I fallen out of love with the FA Cup?

A fourth tier team takes on a club from the second tier. They take them to a replay after an away draw. This is classic FA Cup stuff, and in the past our performance against Charlton would have been applauded. So why was it all so underwhelming?

Before we had children, in between boshing loads of ecstasy tablets and touring the world in a drunken blur on the back of a tuk tuk, obviously, we would occasionally have a Saturday night in with a DVD.

We’d only have one film and we only had one Saturday night, so before I was dispatched to our cupboard sized Blockbuster, we agreed a brief for what we would watch. Four hour historical epics about raping slaves always felt pretty heavy going for a Saturday night, so we’d invariably go for a comedy. That brief would eventually get refined further; belly laughs were unpredictable and used up too much energy, edgy comedy too hit or miss, dark comedy too subtle. We’d eventually settle on a RomCom.

And, for a period, that was all we’d ever watch. It offended no one; we were never particularly happy with it, but similarly never wholly disappointed. There was a familiar story arc that would rarely offend. But, by excluding all other genres, we were no longer film watchers; because we were watching one very specific type of film, we were RomCom watchers, and they're just not the same thing at all. 

I think that’s the point I’ve got to with Oxford; everyone who knows me would say I was interested in football, but I'm not so sure that I am. I'm interested in Oxford United, but I'm not sure that necessarily has much to do with the broader game.

When I was a child, football was the FA Cup – and I loved the FA Cup. The last day of the season, the only live game on TV, Wembley, the hallowed turf, extra time, rolled down socks, cramp, the spectacularly callous nature of semi-finals.

But, Oxford have never had much of a pedigree in the FA Cup. I remember us beating Brighton in 1981, and went to the 5th round game where we were beaten 4-0 at Coventry. But, a 1-0 win over Swindon in 2002 aside, we’ve never really had much to get excited about. Even in our all-conquering glory days, unlike the League Cup, we tended to surrender meekly to superior opponents.

So, I loved the FA Cup, in spite of the Oxford, not because of it. As a result I wasn't expecting much from Tuesday's game because I've never really associated us with that competition. The FA Cup is football and Oxford United is Oxford United. It's the same subtle difference between watching RomComs and watching films.

The problem is that my interest in the cup has withered in recent years. I can’t justify a whole day in front of the TV for the final, semi-finals at Wembley almost make the competition too easy, ITV’s coverage is risible and disinterested. Above all, there’s football everywhere, so even the most mundane Premier League fixture gets more hyperbole than the FA Cup finals of the past.

I can’t keep up with the modern football, I'm not against it per se, in terms of a pure breed strand of entertainment it's much better than it used to be. But, I genuinely can't keep pace with the latest player Chelsea and Manchester City have casually signed for £32 million. Players I’ve vaguely heard of and appear only bit-part players at their clubs suddenly rack up 30+ caps for England. Then there’s the international dimension; suddenly we’re expected to know how Wolfsburg’s left-back is against pace because Norwich are interested in him. Because I can't process this volume of content, I'm very passive and superficial in the way I consume the broader game nowadays.

As a result the competition we're playing in and the opponents we're up against is largely irrelevant. I'm interested in Oxford, but the FA Cup doesn't interest me like it used to. It's been 15 years since we went further, but this year never felt particularly thrilling. The first two rounds, against non-league opposition was about avoiding embarrassment. The postponements because Charlton haven’t upgraded their drainage system for 17 years – despite years swimming in Premier League millions – was like seeing how a magician does his tricks. How are we supposed to believe in the magic of the cup, when the drains are broken? Going 2-0 up in the first game was a moment of surprise, drawing was greeted with a shrug of the shoulders. The ticket prices for the replay were demoralising – could they not have at least pro-rataed the price for season ticket holders?

By the time I walked through the turnstile on Tuesday, there was no buzz of a giant killing in the air. We're too overwhelmed with football and just how BRILLIANT. EVERYTHING. IS. ALWAYS. Charlton Athletic just weren't sexy enough. I don't think any team outside the top half of the Premier League would have been sexy enough to increase the pulse. The crowd size and the attitude of the team suggests I wasn't alone in feeling underwhelmed by it all.

I only really have the bandwidth to process the comings and goings of one club, the rest of the game I can only really embrace superficially. As a result, the FA Cup has become just another game, which is a very very sad state of affairs.

The inconsequential magic of the cup

The early rounds of the League Cup in recent years has been a kind of clearing system between pre-season friendlies and the season proper. It's kind of competitive, but at the same time, it doesn't really matter. We don't expect to win, but it's kind of nice to be involved.

It's like we've arrived too early for a party and we're self consciously eyeing up the buffet which still has cling film all over it while a waitress asks you, again, whether you'd like a drink. Naturally, you decline, and instead read the fire regulations poster to avoid eye-contact.

It feels too early to get excited by something like this, especially when the Premier League is still having its early scuffles about which multi-billion pound player is going to which club. There's something heartening about watching Sky Sports scratching around for something to get excited about. You want to see them squirming for as long as possible. It's a shame to get the season going.

It's a bit like those years when we missed the Conference play-offs and we found ourselves completing our season before April was out. It felt like your mum was picking you up from the school disco at 8.30pm.

In recent years, we've done OK in the early rounds and the games we have been involved in have acquired a purpose in themselves. Bristol Rovers in 2010 was a wonderful reintroduction to proper football after three years in the wilderness. The reward, West Ham, was a gallant, noble and last minute exit.

Against Cardiff in 2011 we gave a good team a good go and went out with no shame at all, and last year we took another good team, Bournemouth, to penalties and won. Each game seemed to signal something positive.

Against Charlton on Tuesday there was a more muted anticipation. The Portsmouth game, and then result, overshadowed it by some considerable margin. As a result we were semi-interested, we know that teams at Charlton's level are semi-interested, so it was never really going to be a humdinger. We were hopeful, but not expectant.

The team was announced, four changes, but with so many new names, who knows whether that means we've rested players or not.

Being the nice family club they are, they politely dismantled us and the League Cup evaporated almost as soon as it appeared. In fact, the only value the competition offered was an aperitif to big fixtures reveal back in June.

Looking back, there have been precious few League Cup games which have seemed so innocuous. A couple of defeats to Gillingham, which I can't remember, but otherwise there's always been something of interest to remark on. This year it felt a bit like one of those FA Trophy games where you start with a vague interest in reaching Wembley and quickly go and find something better to do.