It was surely of no surprise to anyone that Michael Appleton has told Alfie Potter that he has, to use Appleton's own mangled analogy, ‘reached his shelf-life’.
Potter’s departure, which we must assume to be fairly imminent, brings the number of players left at the club from the promotion winning team of 2010 to just two – Jake Wright and Ryan Clarke.
Potter was part of the Wilder/Thomas aggressive signing policy in the summer of 2009. On loan from Peterborough, his reputation had been built, in part, through his performance for Havant and Waterlooville where, improbably, they took the lead twice against Liverpool at Anfield in the FA Cup.
He was brought into a squad of big names, big personalities and big bodies – Creighton, Constable, Midson, Green, Bulman.
Despite being slight, fast and tricky, the antithesis of someone like Creighton, he fitted right in, he'd bounce off robust challenges and react to nothing. He played with the arrogance of a team that was going to get promoted; something that shifted the club overnight from one that was a perpetual victim, to one that was simply going to knock over anyone who got in their way.
But, at the same time Potter was young and small; he looks like a little boy; even the name - Alfie Potter - the boy (wing) wizard. In 2010, just before the start of the first season back in League 2, it was reported that he had been arrested in connection with a nightclub stabbing. It turned out that there had been an incident in a club that he was in, and he was the innocent victim of an 'arrest everyone, ask questions later' policing policy.
In some ways, it was most startling that Alfie Potter was in a nightclub at all; was he old enough? In essence, his struggle was always about breaking out from being the youngster with potential into a being a senior and respected professional.
That would have required him to remodel his game; players like Alan Shearer, Steven Gerrard and, perhaps, the best parallel; Ryan Giggs, found that they had to change their games once their natural youthful talents were dismantled by injury and age.
Both affected Potter, but that's not because he was unlucky, just because he was a professional footballer. It's difficult, without the benefit of an army of crack sports scientists, to know quite what he was supposed to do about it.
So Potter was on a hiding to nothing; wingers thrill and frustrate with equal measure, they don't always beat their man or get the cross in. When it works, it works brilliantly, but frequently it doesn't. Even Joey Beauchamp used to drive fans mad with his inconsistency, and most will agree that Beauchamp was one of our best ever.
This season, a bloke behind me can't help himself everytime the ball goes near Potter; 'Ah, here we go again' he'd say in a state of constant dismay before Potter got a chance to do anything. If he lost the ball trying to go past someone or was tackled, it was further proof that he was inept. It's unfair, because every winger is inconsistent. It's just that, once the tide is against you, it's difficult, probably impossible, to turn it back. The writing has been on the wall for a while.
Like Chris Wilder, Potter seems to have been labelled some kind of failure at Oxford, which is sad and wrong. It might be that his time has come, but that's not to say that he hasn't been a success. Take THAT goal. A goal usually ignites a feeling of relief, that you're going in the right direction, but it's an incomplete feeling; a feeling that we need to get another goal, or defend. Even a last minute goal frequently gives the feeling that it offers a platform for the next game or the rest of the season.
Potter's goal at Wembley was a rare and precious thing; the feeling of completeness, a sense of achievement. Football offers so few moments like that; in my near 40 years of supporting Oxford there was the Jeremy Charles' third goal in 1986, the fourth goal against Peterborough in 1996, and Potter's goal in 2010.
Not only that; he pretty much gave us that feeling twice...
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