The wrap - Oxford United 0 Forest Green Rovers 0, Oxford United 1 Gillingham 0

I used to have a Commodore 64 and the game Rambo II First Blood. The gameplay was even more primitive than the plot of the film it was based on. Essentially, a notably blocky and top heavy eight-bit Rambo runs headlong into a hail of bullets surviving as long as he can before getting shot to shit. I wasn't very good at it and barely lasted more than a minute. I wasn't alone; there's a 10 minute clip on YouTube of which 6 and a half are the load screen and credits. The gameplay is a mere side issue. 

The tactics on Saturday reminded me of that game; give the ball to Ricky Holmes or Marcus Browne and let them run headlong at the defence in the hope of affecting some kind of breakthrough. Pretty much every raid resulted in a predictable, Rambo-style failure until eventually, Browne managed to draw the keeper into a moment of madness and the game was ours. It was hardly sophisticated, but we'll take the points where we can get them.

It's not particularly entertaining and it won't work against better teams, it clearly didn't work in the draw against Forest Green last week. But, with a newly stingy defence, it's aiding a recovery of sorts.

Earlier in the season I was complaining about the sheer chaos of our gameplay - players running into each other, defensive errors and the like. The system we have now is disciplined, but obvious. It is suited to a team full of strong personalities brave enough to embark on kamikaze raids into the opposition defence, which is something we have plenty of.

This is where I think Sam Smith struggles, he's only a few months older than Harvey Bradbury, who many is think of as a raw prospect. In this team, you only get to play if you're prepared to bully your way into the game and Smith is not that kind of player. I suspect Kemar Roofe would have struggled in this team due to the lack of service and team play. Jamie Mackie will demand to be involved because of his personality and experience, Smith doesn't seem to have the personality or game to bully his way into a game.

Bradbury, as Sam Long said afterwards, is a big lump. Karl Robinson's observation was exactly right when he said that while not offering an obvious goal threat, getting centre-backs booked and putting them on the back foot played an important role in securing the three points. I'm not sure about Robinson's view that we should start looking at the top 10, but between Bradbury and Mackie, and looking at our upcoming fixtures, it feels like we just have enough to get us to the January transfer window in a solid state.

Only Robinson knows what who has lined up in the New Year, but for me, I think our recent form should mean we rule out a move for Nile Ranger. The morals arguments aside, Ranger is an opportunity, and also a risk, but now we have established a precarious stability and I would rather we focused on planned development rather than speculative opportunities.

The wrap - Gillingham, Bradford and MK Dons

It was generally acknowledged that December and the Christmas period would define our season and so it has proved to be. It seems most likely that the play-offs are beyond us, and even if we manage to sneak in, then the last few games seem to prove we are still not ready for the Championship.

Whether this is a good thing or not is open to endless debate and probably depends on how impatient you are to see the club achieve its ambitions. The four Christmas games were, of course, overshadowed by the Wigan thrashing. But, looking objectively, they are league leaders and look well equipped to be in the same position at the end of the season, then we played sure-fire play-off contenders Bradford away. Plenty of other teams will lose both those fixtures this season. The problem with them being so close together is that it put pressure on the Gillingham and MK Dons games to pick up points. Four points (and three minutes from taking six) is actually a respectable, if not thrilling points total. So, although Wigan was a humiliation, as a block of results they were probably not wholly unexpected or as disastrous as initially perceived.

Defensively there are issues, of course, if you think that last year we had Edwards, Johnson, Dunkley and Nelson - three of whom can comfortably play in a division above. The back-four we have now is makeshift, each can compete in League 1, but together as a quartet there are issues. 

While MK Dons oscillated gently from boring organisation to blythe incompetence, our performance did show glimpses of what we saw earlier in the season. We were far more mobile in attack, something that has only become possible in the last week or so with the return of van Kessel, Obika and Mehmeti. You could also see the intention to keep moving the ball to pull teams out of shape. English fans are notorious for their affliction to passes going backwards, but it draws the opposition on, helping us to attack on the break. How many times in the last 15 years have we complained about not being able to break teams down at home? This can be a very effective way of doing it.

Of course, the ultimate ambition is to be competitive with the teams at the top of the division. But, there is little doubt that the Eales project was significantly disrupted during the summer, so being on par with last year is not an unrealistic ambition in the circumstances and, despite the disruption, that's pretty much where we are.

Pep Clotet's arrival coincided with the gutting of Michael Appleton's squad. He filled the gap with people he knew he could trust and, more importantly, were available. He's implied in interviews that he didn't expect to have to fill so many holes in the squad. So, what we we have seen to date is not so much the end state, but glimpses of Clotet's philosophy.

If December was a test of our current credentials on the pitch, January may be more important off it. While it's unlikely that we'll fix all the weaknesses in the squad, the nature of any signings we make could give us a clearer indiction of the real Pep Clotet model. 

Gillingham wrap - Oxford United 3 Gillingham 0

I've got a mate who used to work in Formula 1. He's a highly skilled engineer, when I asked him what he did, he said that he designed the bit which holds the wheel to the car, or as you and I might think of it, the thingy.

That's all he did, designed, tested and built this particular thingy, and when he had one thingy, he went back to see if he could improve it. That's it. Not only that, there were hundreds of engineers, all designing different thingies. You'd think that you just design a car, build it and drive it as fast as you can.

Football teams are a bit like that; it's never quite finished. A constant balancing act between optimum performance and blowing yourself to pieces. Just as you think you're reaching perfection, something happens - an injury, a loss of form, a transfer, a retirement.

The last few weeks felt like Pep Clotet was tightening the screws on his machine, perfecting his thingies; blending each component to work as one. We were gradually becoming more of a whole.   With the talent at his disposal, it seemed the question was; how long would it take to get to where we want to be and how long could we hold it?

Gillingham were a curiously deceptive opponent, they seemed competent, but at the same time useless. None-the-less, this was as complete a performance as we could hope for. Maybe more complete than any home game under Michael Appleton last year; and that's saying something

Reaching a sweet spot after six games is impressive although there's a risk we think the job is complete. Injuries to Ribiero and Obika alongside with Williamson's brief parental leave show that this is as dynamic environment as a running Formula 1 car.  What seems certain is that Saturday showed we appear to be ahead of where we might have imagined we'd be given the summer we had.

Gillingham wrap - Gillingham 0 Oxford United 1

I might sound like a wizened old farmer, but if you weren’t around during the great goal-drought of 1996 then you don’t know what a goal-drought is. This was when we managed to go through six whole games without scoring.

We weren’t short of creativity or firepower, we just couldn’t score; Paul Moody was going through one of his lumbering oaf phases, Nigel Jemson was skulking around like a teenager who’d had his Commodore 64 confiscated. By the time we got to the seventh game, against Stoke City, people were genuinely asking what would happen if we never scored again. Like, EVER?

The deadlock was broken by human crab and sideways pass specialist Martin Gray, the first of just four goals he scored in 128 appearances for the club. It’s fair to say that nobody was looking to Gray to break the deadlock.

It didn’t stop there, we actually went on to win 4-1 and having gone 6 games without a goal, the next 6 produced spunked 13.

It was almost as if the only thing that would knock us out of the deep rut we were in was something unexpected. Chey Dunkley’s goal against Gillingham, not his first, but his first with his feet, may just help kick us out of the mini-rut we were threatening to fall into.

It’s been easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we can’t score after we drew blanks against Walsall and Northampton, but it’s easy to forget that we’d scored six in the two games before that.

It’s easy to forget that we don’t have Wes Thomas or that Joe Skarz is only just coming back from injury meaning Marvin Johnson can’t move further up the field. Or that Liam Sercombe, often a source of attacking drive, isn’t available. Or that, in terms of goals scored last season, we lost no less than 67% of our fire power over the summer, 84% if you include Sercombe. Or that the transfer rules have changed making signing new players outside the transfer window nearly impossible.

With Sercombe and Skarz coming back, offering more firepower from midfield and freeing up Marvin Johnson then we should become much more threatening going forward. This might even give more supply to Kane Hemmings, but if we can add a striker, then we’re going to be just fine.

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.

Does the Gillingham result reinforce the need to remove Chris Wilder?

The win against Gillingham surprised everyone, but it didn't spark a renewed optimism amongst Oxford fans. We're now 11th, but nobody is expecting a run at the play-offs. Our form seems to be returning, but most expect it to slip away again. Even if the football is improving, the mood isn't; is there an argument for keeping Chris Wilder?

A dark veil has gently descended over Oxford United and specifically Chris Wilder. It started last year with the most vehement reactionaries screaming for the sacking of the manager after every home draw. Any tabloid journalist will tell you that if you react hard enough often enough, that you'll eventually be right about something; but that doesn't mean we should praise the supposed foresight of extremists. More moderate and thoughtful fans recognised what Wilder had quite a lot of credit banked with his achievements for the club.

Time was needed, and stability, there were mitigating factors such as injuries, financial constraints and the pitch. Plus, it's a long season and all things being even results should improve. The assumption was that the severity of the injury crisis couldn't continue forever and eventually there would be a period of stability where we could judge Wilder's merits and abilities. Things got worse; the spine of the team was desecrated and almost every new injury seemed to come with the news that the player concerned would be out for the season.

Gradually, the darkness has engulfed more and more people and it seems now that almost everyone takes the view that Wilder's time has come. The pedestrian draw on Saturday was met with grudging acceptance that the season, perhaps even our long term ambitions, were over. Of course, then, on Tuesday the team surprised everyone with the win at Gillingham, the third year in a row in which we've beaten the league leaders away from home.

Some have reacted by saying that the result is almost the exception that proves the rule. The 'rule' being that Wilder is incompetent. It doesn't; it proves that Wilder is not a spent force. He's far from perfect, but you don't become the 7th longest serving manager in the league through without having some ability.

Following Tuesday's result, we're only one position lower than we finished last year. While the play-offs seem as distant a prospect as they've been all season, the football argument for replacing Chris Wilder is slightly more open than most will countenance.

However, the Wilder-out argument with the most credence is the economic one. We're the 7th best away team in the league; another argument for keeping him on. But most supporters don't see us away and at home we are lacking in confidence and quality; the pitch is sapping the legs of the likes of Rigg and Potter, the ensuing trench warfare either neutralises the game to the point of tedium or it gives the away team an advantage. Week after week of the same is dispiriting; for the players and the fans. The tide of vacant blue seats rises with each game.

The result is that crowds have dropped. Revenues are only being propped up by season tickets purchased in brighter times last season. Come renewal time, with precious little about the new season to look forward to, many more are likely to take a wait and see approach to next season's involvement. From a customer perspective, with a product promising little, it seems better to keep a little cash in the bank than to commit to a year of disapointment.

The promise of new signings might make a difference, but the prospect of that seems unlikely. More likely is the mass departure of big wage earners replaced by less remarkable names. This may not be a bad thing; better to have moderate to good players playing than good to great players in the treatment room. However, a slew signings that might stimulate a surge of season ticket sales seems unlikely. The other option is to fire the manager to stimulate something.

This will undoubtedly trigger a flurry of interest - one of the most noticeable things about the amount of Twitter traffic during the win over Gillingham was the fact there wasn't any - we stared at each other like an old married couple on Valentine's Day sitting silently in a restaurant hoping no one suggests rounding the night off with some passionless rutting. A vacant manager's seat will get us chattering again, but the malaise digs much deeper, if Lenagan does indeed 'grow some' and fire Wilder is this decisive act really going to jolt us into buying season tickets?

I doubt it. I also doubt that any replacement will be thrilling enough to trick us into immediate renewed optimism. But, on the other hand, it seems a better option than doing nothing and drifting helplessly towards the precipice. I'm a bit tired of the brief dawns of hope that come with wins like the one on Tuesday, and, although my head says that we should stay rational; I still think a new chairman is needed to galvanise and lead the club, a growing part of me says we should just give in and pull the trigger just to get the job out the way, and let's move onto something else, whatever that may be.

Another brick in the rebuilding process

To be honest, I'm not very good at tactics. I couldn't, with any confidence, tell you what 'running the channels' means and due to playing far too much Subbuteo as a child, I couldn't spot an in-game formation change. At least with table football, if you want to pack the midfield, you just pick your player up by the head and put him where you want him.

I do know, however, that a game has four distinct phases. The first twenty minutes is a jockeying for position; all brawn and little brain, establishing who is the aggressor. Who will hit who and how hard. Once that is establish, we move into a more considered phase. The initial adrenalin rush subsides and brains take over. The team who have established themselves as the alpha male sets the tone and rhythm, the other team works around that.

After half-time, manager's adjust their strategy, and players follow it, albeit briefly. You'll see teams attacking down the flanks or pressing in numbers, evidently following their boss' command. Eventually, the impact of the tactical change reduces. This gets you to about 70 minutes, at which point the game actually starts. Players are mentally and physically tired. The aggressors are less aggressive, the manager's tactics are less clear than they were over a cup of tea in the changing room and the objective - chasing or defending a victory - is crystal clear. The game takes the look of a park or school game.

On Saturday, like Tuesday, there was little aggression in the first phase of the game. There didn't appear to be any real plan to win the game, it was more a case of turning up to see what happened. Gillingham, full of the confidence of a top of the table team, kept coming. We really lacked any discernible attacking tactic.

In the second half there was the slow emergence of a team that could compete. Gillingham weren't Barcelona and we weren't Wolvecote Primary School 2nd XI. As the game entered the final stage, we seemed to be getting back to something resembling normal. We attacked like a home team, they seemed quite content, as the away team often is, to secure a point.

Throughout this awakening, the crowd remained patient. The consensus that 'most people' want Chris Wilder sacked is not evident at the game. In fact, it's quite the opposite. If the bad run has culled some of the crowd, then it appears the ones not turning up are those who spit blood on internet forums. What remains is a crowd that is more thoughtful and considerate of our plight. More accepting of our need to heal.

A clean sheet against the top team in the division, who hadn't dropped a point on the road is a big tick in the box. Ryan Clarke will obviously take confidence from his own performance. Mullins looks like a genuine first choice defender rather than a makeweight. Chapman, Foster-Caskey and Heslop is a decent midfield, although perhaps not one you'd rely on all season. For now it works, and hopefully it'll continue to do so while Whing, Leven and Cox regain fitness.

There is still a question mark up front. Smalley looks the most effective striker at the moment; or at least, he seems the one with the mental strength to maintain a performance in a difficult situation. Craddock seems similarly able to perform under pressure. I suspect Wilder's preference for Craddock over Constable is simply down to form.

This result amounts to a reconstruction of our 'self'. An image we all carry to protect ourselves from the harsher realities of life. If it takes a knock, like ours has done recently, we look at ourselves differently, we become self-conscious and don't function properly. We are rediscovering ourselves as a club that can compete and be successful rather than a victim to be bullied. Not a full recovery, but another step in the right direction.

Is Dean Morgan; misunderstood or just a chuffing lazy git?

Dean Morgan divides opinion, doesn’t he?

Some Oxford fans have struggled to warm to him since he arrived at the Kassam. He has a kind of Lewis Haldane thing going on; all nice haircuts and fitful product. More reasoned assessment seems to be that it hasn’t all been bad; far from it. He's had good games against Northampton and Torquay, he scored against Wimbledon. It’s just when it isn’t happening for him, it isn’t happening. To some, when it’s not happening for the team, it’s Morgan’s fault.

Aside from the Haldane factor, it doesn’t help that he’s got Cristano Montano on the other wing. Not that Montano is demonstrably better than Morgan. He’s scored one more goal but he’s frustratingly raw. However, he’s from West Ham, like lovely little Robbie Hall and he’s foreign; which means rather than boo him, we prod him inquisitively like the Ewoks did to R2D2, cowering in awe when he moves.

It doesn’t help that Morgan is here to help plug a gap left by Alfie Potter’s injury. Potter is a player we hold in high regard despite his own propensity to dribble the ball in the Zone of Least Impact; 30 yards from goal.

Morgan didn’t do ‘Brand Morgan’ any good by sitting on floor in the penalty box as Gillingham streamed downfield looking for a winner on Saturday. He did himself even less favour by getting up just as they were preparing to take a corner denying the referee the opportunity to halt the game leaving us defending a corner with 10 men. And then he strolled off the pitch really slowly showing little sign of the injury that was forcing him off.

Perhaps he should have affected a more dramatic reaction to his injury. He could have gone down like he’d been shot. This would have put pressure on the referee to stop the Gillingham break and allow Morgan medical attention he didn’t actually need.

However, with the Fabrice Muamba case, and just this weekend, Piermario Morosini's death, it is becoming increasingly distasteful to feign injury for such minor sporting gain. You might argue, perhaps, that footballers’ propensity to fake serious injury is so endemic within the game that it has bred complacency amongst clubs, administrators and medical teams; a ‘cry-wolf’ syndrome masking the dangers within the sport. If everyone goes down as though they were dead, how do you know when they actually are? This certainly seems to be a factor in Morosini’s case, where medical support he needed was not readily available.

Nobody would have reacted to Andy Whing had he limped off like Morgan did. We like Andy Whing’s attitude, you see. Perhaps it’s because his game reflects our own behaviour during games; all heart on sleeve, screaming, battling, scrapping. Perhaps if we watched games smoking Gauloises cigarettes, listening to expansive, difficult experimental jazz and discussing Michel Foucalt’s views on post-structuralism we would appreciate the more mercurial talents of players like Morgan.

Those who listen to experimental jazz don’t do it for a catchy tune. They listen to it searching for something they’ve never heard before. Amidst those fleeting moments of beauty and genius are periods of false starts, unlistenable noise and musical cul-de-sacs.

I once heard Professor Brian Cox talking about Cern’s apparent discovery of particles travelling faster than the speed of light. He said that someone asked him how worried he was that the theory of relativity; a fundamental mainstay in the understanding of physics, might be wrong.

Not at all, he said, scientists live on the edge of understanding and are driven by a desire to discover new things. Finding that something previously ‘known’ had become ‘unknown’ was exciting, not scary; it meant there was an opportunity to find out something new.

Jake Wright and Chris Wilder jumped to Morgan’s defence directly after Saturday’s game. Both pointed out that Morgan is a winger and wingers have to run at players and take them on. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t. He has to try things that haven’t been tried before; like the theoretical physicist or the experimental jazz musician, making mistakes is all part of his job description. If you don’t make a mistake, you’re probably not trying hard enough.

The scope for success is much narrower if you’re a winger; you’ve got to beat your player, and get an accurate ball into a striker to succeed. If you’re a defender, you don’t even have to play within the rules of the game to have a positive impact. Getting a block in or muscling a striker off the ball are all acceptable means of succeeding in your role.

This mix of required attributes was at the heart of the Chapman substitution; I didn’t understand it at the time, but Wilder explained that he didn’t want to sacrifice the goal-getting abilities of Asa Hall, or the defensive cover of Whing. He didn’t want to sacrifice pace down the wing. But he needed to bring on Constable to try and grab a goal. Chapman was sacrificed because the others couldn’t be. I can see the logic.

Morgan isn’t Lionel Messi; like 99.9% of attacking players around the world there is a high probability that the things he tries will not come off. As Wilder pointed out, there are players up and down the country who are equally frustrating, but it doesn’t make them bad players.

Gillingham 0 Oxford United 1

I wasn’t really tuned into the EPPP vote. But, having read about it, perhaps the most surprising thing about it is that people are surprised about it.

Those at the very top of the game don’t need this, of course. Theirs is just a big cash race. Player development is a fool’s game; it takes too long and is far too risky. The next 14 Premier League clubs, however, are so laden with debt and are such brittle businesses; anything that skews the game in their favour, protecting them from external competition, has got to be a good thing. It’s not so much a question of buying success, or even being greedy, it’s just a question of survival.

Do the rest of us suffer? In a sense, if we use the top of the Premier League as our reference point for success. But the quality gap is insurmountable anyway. As a rule of thumb, it’ll cost half a billion pounds to touch the top of the Premier League. To be a successful Premier League club, we would have to corrupt ourselves, change our identity.

So, why do we use it as a reference point? The more detached that the Premier League becomes, in a sense, the better it is for us. OK, we’ll never threaten the very top of the game, but so what? Once the Premier League money-race finally divorces itself from the rest of the sport, either through EPPP or by removing promotion or some other nefarious means, then the rest of the sport can readjust and carry on in a healthier – more competitive - state.

The success of football’s business model over the last century has been in its overall competition, not in the success of any individual club. Since the Premier League has come into being, it’s been open warfare, destroy one club in order to make another. Manchester City’s thrashing of Manchester United on Sunday was a pretty hollow victory because it only proved what we already know – money gives you success. We don’t need football to prove that. In that context, football is a complete waste of time.  

Do you know the difference between a nationalist and a patriot? A nationalist loves his country and hates all others. A patriot loves his country, but doesn’t hate all others. The Premier League are the nationalists of football – they want to destroy others. The rest of us are the patriots. I don’t want to win promotion by changing the rules to ensure we destroy everyone else, I want to win by being the best at football in the division.

Saturday’s defeat to Gillingham was, of course, galling. And we slipped to 7^th as a result. A season in a competitive league is an epic story fraught with peril and potential disaster, but equally, it’s full of hope and excitement. Crawley aside, League 2 is a truly competitive division based on sporting endeavor. I'd much rather League 2 uncertainty than Premiership hegemony. Of course, we all crave certainty, we would love to know that we’ll go up. But if we did, we’d be much poorer for it. Bring on the rollercoaster.

Gillingham 0 Yellows 0

If Oxford United were a teenage girl it would wear purple eye-shadow and paint its bedroom black. Every time its dad told her that her skirt was too short, she’d shorten it further.

In the week in which we had a featurette on Late Kick-Off and featured as The Fans of the Week on Soccer AM, and On the very day that the Premier League actually lived up to its hype by spewing up a tonne of goals, such is our petulant contrariness, we cocked a snoot at such frippery and finally managed to keep a clean sheet against Gillingham. There was even a caller to BBC’s 606 saying how wonderfully awful it had been.

But oh, the glory, it was treated as though it were a victory. Indeed a goal would have tainted the purity of the achievement. Whatever we are dong this season; it will clearly be done our way, on our terms.

Yellows 0 Gillingham 1

I can’t remember the game, but earlier this season a player went down under a heavy challenge and there was a moment of panic. Despite the beckoning of Ryan Clarke and the increasingly apoplectic screams of the fans, the doctor and his team walked steadily to towards the stricken player.

Why would a medical professional only walk to the aid of an apparently badly injured player when everyone else is emphasising the urgency of the situation?

I thought about it. The doctor knows that in most cases the player is not about to die. They know too, that if he is, there’s not a lot he can do about it. If he ran, he could fall or raise his heart rate so that he was less able to make calm medical decisions. By running, he wouldn’t improve the likelihood making an effective medical intervention, but would increase the likelihood of failing to do so.

Football is prone to over-reaction, whether its players about to die from a clash of heads or rolling around on the ground from a tap on the ankle. We sack managers after 2 or 3 bad results and scream like we’ve seen a drowning child at the sight of a corner being taken outside the ark.

This isn’t cynicism or idiocy, everyone knows that stability is the most important thing in football, Alex Ferguson proves that. We even applaud strikers who can execute a ‘cool finish’. The over reaction is a learnt behaviour, and a deep seated cultural one at that.

If you’re brought up in a culture of over-reaction then it seems logical that everything you do will reflect that. And this is what seems to be going on at the moment with us.

There wasn’t much wrong with the approach earlier in the season. Our form needed some tweaks, but didn’t warrant a complete restructuring of the team.

I get the signing of Wotton, he’s a bit of bite and experience in midfield, although I’m not sure he’s better than Danny ‘gets too involved in the game’ Bulman. Rather than a straight replacement for Josh Payne, who looks a good player if a bit soft-footed, Wotton has bumped Payne who, in turn, has bumped Heslop. With Clist replacing Hall, we’ve completely remodelled the midfield.

Up front, MacLean looks a decent player, but can he be squeezed in with the ‘untouchables’ of Constable and Craddock?

At the back rather than sticking with the impervious Worley and Wright, we’ve introduced Futcher who is no better than either, or Mark Creighton.

Chris Wilder is feeling the pressure, nobody needs to remind him of the situation we're in. But the increasingly radical calls for his head mean he’s trying to find increasingly radical solution to our problems. In fact, we just needs some subtle tweaks.

Equally, now is not the time to make radical decisions about Chris Wilder. People are talking about relegation, but there's a long way to go and the difference between now and 2006 is that we have all the assets we need are at the club and the time to get it right.