Tamworth 0 Yellows 0

One of the frustrating things about the current run is that it’s very difficult to pin point what’s going wrong. You can speculate about the changes of personnel or the supposed curse that says we’re destined to throw this away, but it’s not like we’re playing badly per se, we’re just not getting the results.

Perhaps it’s better to look at the season in a different way. The reason that the championship is awarded at the end of the season is because only then, when everyone has played everyone else, do you get the true picture of who is the best team. The league table at any other point in the season, is merely a distraction.

Look at the current ‘bad’ run: Hayes was the absolute shitter, undeniably bad; but then every team would expect one shitter a season. Manchester United lost to Burnley this year, Chelsea to Wigan that’s been their shitter. We shouldn’t be surprised to have one ourselves.

You’d expect to get the occasional away draw against dogged, unspectacular teams like Cambridge and Tamworth. You might, at some point in the season, also expect a team chasing the play-offs to escape the Kassam with a point, as Kettering did.

It just so happens that these games were drawn to be played together. Had they been scattered throughout the rest of the season, we wouldn’t be looking for reasons that it’s gone horribly wrong. We’d be here now knowing we were in a title fight.

Form and luck barely plays a part in the outcome of a season. When all the games have been played, the good teams are always at the top and the bad teams at the bottom. For every Luton disaster, there’s a Miracle of Crawley, for the points dropped against Kettering, there are points gained against York. If you’re a team that’s going to lose 5 games in a season, that’s what you’ll do – you may lose all five in a row, or one every six weeks, but in the end it’s your class will determine where you end up.

Looking forward, we can’t be shocked if we drop points against Rushden and Stevenage away, but we’d expect to beat Gateshead. After this, we have six games all of which look winnable whilst Stevenage have Luton, Wimbledon, Kidderminster and York, games where you might expect them to drop points. They may be building a reasonable lead at the moment, but, unlike us they haven’t played all the nasties.

Anyone who thought we’d be walking it by now was being naïve. A vast majority of league titles are won in the last couple of games a season, why shouldn’t we expect it to be the same here?

Yellows 0 Tamworth 1

That must be what the first game of the season would feel like if you played no pre-season friendlies. It was how Russell Brand describes wearing new shoes; for a while if feels like they’re wearing you.

It all started down the left; Franny Green has great endeavour and a good attitude, but his talents are all about raw energy and pace. This put pressure on Tonkin to provide balance – while he settled as the game went along, he looked uncomfortable in the opening exchanges. This, in turn, put pressure on Wright – who was under greatest scrutiny – and he looked uncertain throughout. The confusion on the left meant Creighton had to hold things together, not least because Chapman, once again, put in a decidedly half-hearted performance.

Tamworth exploited it brilliantly. Christie bullied the nervous defensive unit, which meant at no point in the first half did we settle. They got the jammy goal and dug in. I don’t blame the referee, you can’t say he didn’t acknowledge their time wasting with bookings and injury time.

What is surprising was that Wilder was prepared to take such a risk by making such a wholesale changes all in one area of the pitch. The Foster situation makes his selection untenable. Tonkin’s acquisition has had such a fanfare that it would have been odd not to include him. Whether Franny Green is un-droppable, it open to debate. Not that he was the worst player on the pitch, but you have to look at these things as a unit.

It’s still not like 2006/7 – as effective as Tamworth plan was in its execution, they needed luck at both ends to make it work. Other teams might come to the Kassam with the same gameplan but will get nowhere near us. However, people’s belief that this is the start of the collapse, may yet destabilise us.

Look up not down

Aside from the flourish of excitement at the end, yesterday was a textbook Oxford victory. Early goal, penalty to cement things, tight at the back. As previously mentioned; we'll just have to get used to it as our way.

Dagenham's victory, their fifth in six, shows their current strength. On Tuesday, they did what we did to them earlier in the season; slapped us down. Just when it looked like there was a fight on, they showed that they're looking worthy champions.

That's not to say we should give up the fight just yet - with the voodoo hopefully lifted we can pick up points in March, that could make the last month of the season much more interesting.

What's more, we're a club that has, in recent seasons, got used to cruising to the end of a season. Last year's biggest problem was complacency; firstly by the concept that a team like Oxford couldn't go down, and secondly when we were in trouble, feeling that Jim Smith would turn the dismal into devastating overnight. We almost forgot to put in the effort to pick up the points for safety.

Whilst it seems highly unlikely that we'll drop out of the play-off positions, to cruise into the play-offs would be a huge mistake. Also, we don't want to let the culture of panic creep back in by looking down to the points difference between us and 6th place.

It looks like the play-offs will be the final act of this season's drama - and it is quite nice to have an Oxford season that is enjoying drama at the right end of the table - but we mustn't forget this interim period, because it's likely to define how the story will end.

Lambs to the slaughter

I'm not a cricket fan, I share a view that its all a bit slow, goes on for days and always seems to end in a draw. However, I wasn't alone in obtaining a temporary membership of the cricket fan club during the 2005 Ashes.

There was one moment, at Edgbaston, I think, which was a microcosm of great cricket. England were toiling and a wicket seemed a distant wish. Flintoff bowled an over which increased in pressure with every ball, he conceded runs whilst he did it but finished the over with two wickets and a momentum that turned the game on its head. In football, conceding goals is considered cataclysmic, in cricket you concede runs for the greater good.

It reminded me of yesterday's winning penalty. Whether the foul itself was a penalty or not is disputable, but the pressure that had built up to that moment made a penalty almost inevitable.

I'm not the kind of person who will make claims about Oxford having the greatest fans in the world but Oxblogger's brother-in-law is a Tamworth fan and observed the way Oxford fans appeal for everything; "like Liverpool in the seventies". The pressure put on the referee by the play itself and the fans was as big a component on the award as the challenge on Pettefer.

Difficult to know whether this is unfair, or whether like in cricket, it's an oft overlooked depth of a game. It's certainly something Jim Smith seems aware of it; several players have remarked that they don't need to win games in the first five minutes, it's been repeated on a number of ocassions, and can only have come from one man.