Wingers' Week Part 3 - The collapse of a dynasty

With Beauchamp, Allen and Powell all coming through around the same time, it was easy to think that we had a right to continue to produce this calibre of player. And this calibre of winger, in particular. But, we were changing. The Kassam Era's nuclear winter had brought a new coldness to the club. Football was changing too. Players were getting fitter and wingers were replaced by more versatile wing-backs who could attack and defend for 90 minutes. Also, managers were more paranoid about losing, so their teams were getting more compact, with a packed midfield and a single striker. The luxury of the winger, with his notoriously patchy involvement in the game, was being phased out.

But, as Joey Beauchamp's career wound down, it seemed that there was yet another waiting to take to the stage. Chris Hackett had the rawness of Chris Allen, but he was playing in a team in steep decline. Fans continued hold him in high regard, in hope that he might emerge as the next in line to the throne. Occasionally, he'd show something of what he had, but usually only as a substitute and, only then, when he was linking up with Dean Whitehead or Jamie Brooks. New Year 2006 came and Firoz Kassam committed suicide on behalf of the club when he sold Lee Bradbury to Southend, Craig Davies to Verona and Hackett to Hearts. This stripped us of our attacking talent, even a faltering one, and our crumbling edifice finally collapsed.

The decay started some time before that though, it was impossible to not have reservations when Graham Rix was appointed in 2004. He'd been placed on the sex offender register five years earlier, for having sex with a 15 year old girl who was the daughter of a family friend. With this in his background, he was never realistically going to survive for long. In addition, he carried a label of being one of the best coaches in the country despite a track record of abject failure in his only management role at Portsmouth. It was the classic Kassam problem of recruiting CVs not people. Rix wasn't going to survive at a club which had expectations beyond all measure and failure deep in its DNA.

However, he brought with him a philosophy which tried to turn Ian Atkins' direct and pragmatic game on its head. He wanted to play the football that his text books said was 'right'. He introduced a passing game instantly, I still have the hair raising memory of Andy Crosby and Matt Bound passing the ball along their own 6 yard box in Rix's first game against Doncaster. 

On the wing that day was Courtney Pitt, a signing Rix made 'from Chelsea' (although he actually came from Portsmouth). Pitt's 9 games for the club wouldn't normally be worthy of a mention in any Oxford story. However, the newly proclaimed philosophy and the introduction of a winger to illustrate its intent, he ignited a brief flicker of hope. 

Pitt once had a cameo appearance in a documentary about football agents. Sky Andrew was seen trying to negotiate a deal for him, while he walked with a gangster limp and drove a brand new Audi TT. It was the ultimate image of the vacuous professional, presented as something exciting and aspirational. Pitt's performance was disinterested and ineffectual, to me, he, perhaps more than perhaps any other player, illustrated and confirmed the terminal decline the club was in. The club died in 2006, but the spirit of the winger died with Courtney Pitt two years earlier.

The spiral of decline continued all the way to the Conference. Oxford were gripped with football's New Seriousness. Wingers were out, combative midfielders were in. There was virtually no evidence of any wingers during Jim Smith's era. When his plan A didn't stopped working in 2007, there was no plan B. He could have done with a couple of wingers to get us out of the sludge.

Kassam All Star XI - Midfield part 1

Oxford United didn’t have a midfield for the first three years of life at the Kassam. Under Mark Wright they used to melt into the gaps in between the defenders effectively creating a flat back 8. Under Ian Atkins they were bypassed completely. In fact, no player touched the ball in the centre circle apart from kicking-off between 2001 and 2004.

Across the midfield, as was the way with the move to the Kassam, we started the first season with a new look. Matt Murphy was left behind in the rubble of the Manor, Joey Beauchamp gazed on like a child sitting on the mound behind the open west end of the ground on match day.

Paul Tait made it across the divide to the Kassam, but his most memorable moment was years before showing off a shirt bearing the legend ‘Shit on the Villa’ when scoring for Birmingham at Wembley. He was joined by Dave Savage, a player who survived deep into the Atkins revolution. Savage was afflicted by the “Kassam Spiral”; hated in his first season, loved in his second.

Waiting in the wings was the pock marked junior Dean Whitehead. He and Chris Hackett would occasionally make cameos under Wright and Atkins, but calls to play him regularly were often resisted. By the time Whitehead was a regular, he was dynamic, creative and a much more complete footballer than the club had produced for years. The nuturing seemed to instill in Whitehead a work ethic that has served him well in a career that has taken in Sunderland and Stoke.

For all that Atkins did that was good with Whitehead, his pragmatic football philosophy did not breed a great dynasty in midfield maestros. Bobby Ford returned, but had his spirit truly broken by the long ball game. James Hunt joined but his role was primarily to stand in the middle of the pitch shouting ‘Great punt Crozzer, now get something on it Alsop” as he watched another ball sour over his head.

You’d think that Graham Rix, one of the country’s most respected young coaches (and convicted sex offender) would have put passing football at the heart of his gameplan. Oddly, despite everything he claimed to be, he seemed completely incapable of selecting a midfielder with any degree of competence. Derek Townsley came and went, Rob Wolleaston came, had great hair, looked OK and then went. At least Paul Wanless returned and gave a half decent account of himself.

Rix’s reign removed the last chock of sanity keeping the United juggernaught from sliding down the hill to its death. We simply descended into a form of mania. Ramon Diaz introduced to the midfield the likes of Diaz (junior), Raponi, Cominelli and Karam – they had an average height of 5ft 4 and spent most of their time shivering with their sleeves pulled over their hands. They might have been a boy band in a reality TV show doing whacky challenges. Had they not kept turning up to games, Diaz would surely have been accused of using his position to smuggle illegal immigrants to the country. They were barely footballers, let alone League 2 footballers.

Uncharacteristically, Brian Talbot introduced some normality to the midfield. In particular, his signing of Chris Hargreaves, which offered a degree of maturity and level headedness that couldn’t be fostered throughout the rest of the side.

Later Andy Burgess joined, a man with a fantastically overstated ego. For most of the time he sloped around waiting for the world to offer him a living. For a few weeks at the beginning of the Conference era, he turned into Zinedine Zidane. There was fleeting talk of a transfer to Leeds. At which point he seemed unwilling to allow his talents to be displayed on the pitch - a protest, one assumes. A few years later he returned to the Kassam with Rushden, he preceding the game with trash talk the very best heavyweight boxers would be proud of. He was clearly motivated to teach us a lesson. He subsequently put in a performance of spectacular ineptitude and disinterest.

And with that, we lost our league position. The first five years, in which we succeeded in doing nothing more than plummet into the Conference, only Dean Whitehead is really deserving of a place in the Kassam All Star XI.