The wrap - Oxford United 1 Coventry City 2

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If there are problems that he struggles to articulate, how does he start finding a solution?

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?

The wrap - Barnsley 4 Oxford United 0, Oxford United 0 Fleetwood Town 2, Oxford United 2 Coventry City 0

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Wembley wrap - Coventry City 2 Oxford United 1

Apparently, drowning is a pleasurable experience. Something to do with the deprivation of oxygen and the feeling of euphoria that results. It’s a paradox, a bit like the idea that a trip to Wembley to see your favourite football team should be a miserable one.

I’m not just talking about the result. In fact, I’m not even talking about the result. The run up to the EFL Trophy final was full of soul searching and hand ringing. Tears (metaphorical or real) were shed, non-boycotters sent messages to boycotters like they were talking a depressive down from the window ledge of a tall building. Boycotters wrestled their consciences as they reconciled their split loyalties to their team and their principles.

Everything was so serious; this wasn’t the giddy mayhem of the past, the club and fan groups slogged away trying to sell tickets; the line that this might be the last trip to Wembley for a generation sounded like a threat; come to this because you might be dead next time. The sense of delirious fun of previous years was absent. This was about doing a job, winning the game and getting out before we could crack a smile.

Coventry fans seemed less distracted by the side-show; they have bigger problems to deal with, I suppose. Their 1987 Cup Final win aside, they haven’t finished in the top six of any division for 44 years. Even the perverse pleasures of relegation – that drowning feeling - have been largely absent given they’ve only gone down twice. They are, in effect, the saddest team in England; this was a rare chink of joy in the bleakness of their current and past experience.

But their troubles run deeper still; 85% of their matchday profit goes to Wasps Rugby Club, they have, effectively, no income. They want Sisu out, but Sisu aren’t going anywhere. They might try to escape to Coventry Rugby Club and their 4,000 capacity stadium, in short, they are stuck, suffocating in a vacuum.


So they gobble up as many tickets as they can get their hands on. Around the stadium there’s a distinctly retro feel about the shirts their fans are wearing – every era is represented, like a celebration of their past. Barely anyone seems to be in this year’s designs, none of them go to games anyway, I suppose. John Sillett is introduced to the crowd beforehand to raucous cheers.

Inside, the atmosphere amongst Oxford fans is rather less excitable, it’s almost complacent, the Coventry players appear to a deafening roar, we appear to warm applause. But surely once the game gets going, the difference in class will show?

We start slowly, which at first appears deliberate. Last year we started like a train, but ran out of steam at a key time. They scuff in an opener and we need to find another gear. But, it doesn’t come; we’re the better team but look less likely to win. Loads of possession but nothing is working, what’s going on?

Our game changers aren’t firing; this is our tenth game since the semi-final against Luton just a month ago. Marvin Johnson, who has started eight of them, looks lethargic and leggy. Chris Maguire is just back from injury, Ryan Ledson returning from international duty, Rob Hall is playing his seventh in eight and seems strangely blunted. We’re knackered and Wembley is draining any remaining energy we have.

Joe Rothwell, who has played just three games since Luton, is bright enough, dancing through challenges and threatening a break through, but he can’t do it on his own. Like against Bristol Rovers, where Michael Appleton made one substitution despite being 0-2 down at half time, the manager resists making changes. He knows he doesn’t have anything on the bench. The second smallest squad in the division, without Martinez, McAlney, Thomas or Martin and with MacDonald and Taylor long gone are blowing fumes.

Appleton’s only option is Liam Sercombe who has started just four times since Luton. As he warms up, they slot in a second and it looks to be all over. Sercombe comes out like he’s been fired from a rocket launcher. He doesn’t look like the type to get angry, but he’s like a snarling animal. Afterwards he retweets all the supportive messages he received, is he trying to make a point?

Coventry are tiring, it’s not been a defensive rear-guard, but they have been resolute. Cramping becomes endemic, suddenly they’re tiring more quickly than we are and the game evens up. Sercombe, inevitably, drills home for 2-1 and the game becomes ludicrously open. All discipline out the way, the last 15 minutes involve Curtis Nelson playing centre-forward and Simon Eastwood abandoning his goal. Rob Hall and Kane Hemmings break the Coventry defensive line but look unconvincing as they advance towards goal. Nobody is playing in their designated position anymore; Michael Appleton must be scratching his tattoos off at the sight of the chaos. There will be a chance, you feel and it comes in the 94th minute. Mayhem on the goal line, but nobody can put their foot through it and bring the equaliser. I’m not sure we’d have deserved it had it gone in or at least Coventry didn’t deserve to lose. They came to enjoy it, and we’d have spoilt their fun. That just didn’t seem right.

The aftermath is grim; fans who questioned whether they would attend at all vent forth at players for ‘not turning up’. Few players avoid the vitriol; some should never wear the shirt again. Oh my goodness. We’ve played 115 games in less than two seasons; won promotion, been to Wembley twice, won derbies and beaten teams in each of the top five divisions. The players and manager don’t get to pick and choose when and where they go to games, they don’t get to boycott things on points of principle, they turn up, home and away, capacity crowd or empty stadium and they have performed far more often than not. They didn’t today and that’s just the way it is, it’ll hurt them more than us in the long run. If it is another 20 years before we get to Wembley again, at least we’ll get to go. The players have the tiniest window to experience glory and it’s closing quickly.

Wembley is a rare treat, as is the team that has taken us there twice in a year. We’ve treated it like we’re dealing with a mundane chore. It’s time to get a grip.

Weekly wrap - Oxford United 4 Coventry City 1, Oxford United 1 Gillingham 0, Scunthorpe 1 Oxford United 1

If there was anything that characterised our start to the season it was as nice as our football could be, we kept getting beaten up by the big boys. If there was anything that characterised our last week it was how suddenly we'd toughened up.

The defeat to Shrewsbury took us to just outside the relegation zone. Darryl Eales gallantly suggested that he looked at the points total rather than our position, but it was little comfort. What was more concerning was the general impotence of our display – in particular, our start – it was not just like we'd been found out, it was like we were resigned to taking a beating whenever we came up against a bit of muscle. Then, something changed and against Coventry we were out of the blocks like lightening.

I moved seats to sit with Brinyhoof so we were in line with the six yard box at the home end. We seemed to spend the whole of the first half watching Chris Maguire take corners. It was a surreal level of dominance; at one point I looked over at the scoreboard to see how long it was until half-time and saw that we’d only been playing 20 minutes, such was the dynamism of our display, we packed a game's worth of attacking into a few minutes.

A Coventry newspaper described their display as one of the worst in their history; which brings the obvious question; were we good or were they bad? It made me think that the Gillingham game could be a bit of a let down. In the end it was a different kind of display, but no less pleasing.

The whole display was characterised by graft, punctuated by a moment of genuine class from Marvin Johnson. It’s interesting that Johnson and Hemmings seem to be slowly settling into their roles. Johnson is having a growing influence on our play while Hemmings is slowly finding his goal touch. The bloke behind me thinks Hemmings is ‘useless’ despite him now scoring more goals than Danny Hylton had this time last year. It’s easy to forget sometimes that these are young men coming into a new environment, possibly living in a new area; it’s going to take a while for them to settle and perform. This seems to be one of the things that Michael Appleton excels at; I cannot think of a player he's signed in the last year or so who hasn't eventually performed.

Surely then, with our erratic form, after two good displays a trip to league leaders Scunthorpe would see us finally blow it and return home with nothing. If nothing else, two such committed displays did seem to have taken their toll with Wes Thomas, Joe Skarz and Chey Dunkley all coming off with injuries in the previous two games.

Well, no; once again with this new found resilience we came away with a point and maybe deserved three. Seven points in seven days is impressive, but what is more important is the new found steel we seem to have acquired across the team.

Coventry wrap - Coventry City 2 Oxford United 1

My first away game was against Coventry City in 1982. I'd been to big stadiums before, but this was the first time as a bona fide away fan. We'd just tanked Brighton in the FA Cup - a moment that might later be looked on as the Big Bang that sprung The Glory Years. Coventry City were next up and me and my dad decided to go.

I remember us having to weave our way through towns and villages as the M40 link from Oxford to Birmingham wouldn't be complete for another year. It made the journey feel decidedly more epic than it does today. The scene on our arrival at Highfield Road could have been a parody documentary on 1980s football hosted by Danny Dyer - I opened my door and was nearly knocked over by an Oxford fan being pursued by a group of Coventry fans; it was the beginning of a particularly unpleasant day.

Coventry felt like a big, modern club, they were in the 1st Division, they were the first to have an all-seater stadium and they had embraced the commercialism of the modern game with a kit that embedded the logo of their sponsors, Talbot, into the design. I thought it was the greatest kit ever, although they didn't wear it on the day.

We conceded late in the first half and were pulled apart in the second, eventually going down 4-0. Oxford fans spent most of the second half ripping seats out and throwing them on the pitch. When my dad asked a policeman what we should do to avoid the trouble, he said we should throw our scarves in the bin and run. Interestingly, the game was part of a document submitted as part of the Hillsborough review.

The experience stayed with me, there was a sense of fear and awe, Coventry were a big club. This continued through their FA Cup win in 1987 and into the 90s when they eventually succumbed to relegation from the top flight in 2001. But, recently I found out something remarkable; they have not finished in the top six of any division for fifty years.

Half-a-century and barely a whiff of joy. The Cup win apart, they have suffered a slow, imperceptible decline. It feels like one of those people who dies on their own and nobody notices because their standing orders kept paying the bills. Dying of sadness in a way that nobody else cares enough to know about.

They are embroiled in their latest crisis, an existential battle with Sisu over their ground and ultimately their future. They might look and feel like a big club, but this is League 1, the elephants graveyard. I think we all thought they were a dying animal waiting to be put out of its misery.

I would like to offer some kind of analysis of the game, but I was sat practically at pitch-level. This didn’t stop the bloke behind me being able to argue about offside decisions which he could only have seen if he was using a camera mounted to a drone.

Whatever our tactical failings, this felt like the Wimbledon game, a lesson in self-destruction. We seemed to assume we’d turn up and perform, but nothing seemed to work as it should. We seem to lack the experience we got from people like Jake Wright and Johnny Mullins which meant we kept our focus whoever we faced. It was something that Michael Appleton commented on last year, he had a small group of players that would lead discussions and solve the squad's own problems. Do we have those players now?

John Lundstram came in for quite a bit of criticism, but rather than dropping him ,as some seem to suggest, I think we need to look at whether his captaincy plays too heavily on his shoulders. But then, if not him, who is the captain? Chey Dunkley has the greatest presence in the team, but he’s also young and would we want to be risk his development giving him the burden of the armband. Which brings back to the key point; how many leaders have we got?