The wrap - Bristol Rovers 0 Oxford United 0

I’m in Devon. It’s partly Michael Appleton’s fault. In his first terrible year, I was so bored, I started to form my exit strategy from football fan to football consumer. Before giving up my season ticket completely I decided that I’d no longer wait for the fixtures to come out to make non-footballing plans. So, in 2015 we decided to go on holiday in Devon during half term week regardless of how the fixtures fell, and have been doing it ever since.

Then we had the best season ever and I never gave up my season ticket.

As the result of a traumatic traffic based experience around Cribs Causeway one summer a few years ago which resulted in a similarly traumatic mercy stop at the lawless Gordano Services in peak season to relieve aching bladders and ease mental fatigue, we decided this year to leave early to avoid delays.

We always stop at Chieveley Services, it acts as the gateway to our holiday. I like Chieveley for this and other reasons. If I’d had the foresight to spend my life doing something fulfilling, it would have been to undertake deep anthropological studies of the nation’s service stations on Saturdays.

I love service stations on Saturdays, particularly around lunchtime. You’ll be idly choosing whether to spend your last six pounds on a Mars bar or a single packet of peanuts and you’ll see someone in a Barnsley or Newport shirt come in. Or better still Cindeford Town or Bromsgrove Rovers. Then there’ll be others, bursting for the toilet, or a coffee. They’ll have just decanted from a supporters' coach, like bees in a smoked out hive, the journey has made them soporific and so it's time to stretch the legs. It’s less intimidating than a pub, the most aggressive thing that happens is someone asks for an extra gherkin in their Big Mac.

If they’re really daring, there’ll have their eye one of the naughty top shelf magazines. The pack mentality emboldens them. They wouldn’t buy it for their own gratification, obviously, just for laughs; a trophy to take back to the coach.

Incidentally, in a world of plentiful bosoms and vaginal exposure in digital form, this cannot be the way Razzle or Men Only survive in print form. Our local village shop maintains a small selection of specialist gentlemen’s literature. How big is the market for people who are desperate enough to seek sexual stimulation from pictures of naked women, and have enough bravado and means to happily buy this stuff - often from a thickset judgemental woman in her sixties who knows nothing of professional client confidentiality - but who are also not able to access the internet? That's one venn diagram with a small intersection; which is no reference to something you'd see in Readers' Wives.

Back at the services. So, ever since I was a child, whenever I’ve seen fans from other teams I’ve followed their fortunes for the day; who they’re playing, what the score was and what that means to their league position.

It’s an underrated branch of study, we know all about football through the lens of the media, and by attending games, but we never talk about the bit in the middle. Service stations are an administrative necessity for going to football, but they act as a cultural clearing house for fans dedicated to their own petty cause. Each one, heading off on a campaign to foreign parts from which a story, of some kind, will emerge. Football is a commonwealth, but it’s only at a motorway service station do we ever meet and accept each other as equals.

So, we’re at Chieveley, but it’s a bit early for most football fans, there’s a hockey team milling around in their team kit, and a couple of people in the colours of Jersey Reds, whoever they are. I still enjoy the hubbub; the curious mixes of inter-generational groups, a woman on her own with more children than she can have reasonably conceived, a couple of such an age that you wouldn't trust them to leave their own front garden let alone drive down the M4, and another, so appallingly obese their bodies slide at a 45 degree angle from the roles of chin fat as though they've been inflated, they are not so much sitting in their chairs as being propped up against them. They are staring in opposite directions furtively as though the empty plates of full English breakfast they have evidently just inhaled are the only thing to have given away their dark secret that heart disease and Type 2 Diabetes are mere moments away.

Within this swill of people and their stories, I see a familiar light-blue top and an even more familiar yellow badge. Chieveley is only 60 miles from Bristol, so it is possible I will see the odd Oxford fan, although unlikely given that there's still nearly five hours until kick-off. My heart lightens, this must be what it's like for a panda to have a prospective mate introduced to their enclosure.

But, it's not a fan, it's Luke Garbutt, on his own, in his training kit with his washbag under his arm. He looks a little lost, and perhaps he is, he's a long way from the changing rooms at the Memorial Ground. I hope to see John Mousinho shaking the last drops of wee into a urinal in the gents, or Derek Fazackerley trying the travel cushions fashioned to look like slices of watermelon outside WH Smith, or maybe Shandon Baptiste panic buying an over-priced iPhone accessory from a small kiosk. Perhaps Jamie Mackie is outside contemplating AA membership now he's over 30 and has to think about his future. But there's nobody. He's on his own in what I assume to be a practical measure. Presumably it's more convenient for him to be picked up by the team coach than to drive down to the Kassam and back along the M4.

I wasn't bold enough to talk to him, after 'I'm an Oxford fan' we have nothing in common. And, let's face it, being an Oxford fan isn't something we have in common either. I point him out to my largely disinterested family; "I thought he was just a normal person" said my daughter afterwards. So did I, there he is ambling towards Costa, like, well, a normal person. I feel a bit guilty about whatever I might have said about him in the stands when I didn't think he was a normal person, but just a footballer. Luckily, it probably isn't much; he seems to have been OK whenever I've seen him.

Obviously I follow his day - which ultimately involved him not playing in our 0-0 draw. I'm pleased with the point; it's another step in a slow recovery, and also sympathetic to Garbutt whose day seems to have been a largely pointless ball ache. I just hope he knows that they start charging if you park for more than two hours.

The wrap - Bristol Rovers and Rotherham

Oxford United 1 Bristol Rovers 2
There is a very tangible gloom descending over the club at the moment. The highs of Charlton were more than mirrored by the lows of Bristol Rovers.

I don't think the performance was as bad as most suggested. There seemed to be more energy and movement, and a willingness to move the ball around, but having scored so early, we slowly lost our way.

This seemed to be down to experience and leadership. To score so early is a shock, the prospect of defending for 90 minutes probably seemed daunting, as is the idea of taking a risk to go for another goal. We were lost in between two mindsets, and where we often think of a football team as being a single unit, you're actually faced with eleven people trying agree, in real-time, what to do with a situation they were not prepared for. In most games, the opening stages are about establishing a hierarchy, a pattern or platform from which you can build, very rarely do you expect goals.

Once you're through the opening 20 minutes or so, the game tends to set down to a pattern, players stop thinking and start responding. In the last 20 minutes, the tactical options narrow further - you're chasing the game, or defending a lead, sometimes the game is all but over. With more experience the team should have decided that the early goal was a bonus but carried on as if it hadn't happened. One of the signs of a good team is their relentlessness, a complete disregard for the score.

Bristol Rovers are a difficult team for us to face at home. We often regress to the idea of voodoos or magic to explain difficult opponents, but I think it's a combination of factors.

A short blast down the M4, Rovers will always bring large numbers to the Kassam, they are grouped together and the banking makes them look larger than they are. In addition, there's the away mindset, there is, effectively little to lose. This is just one big day out, winning is just the icing on the cake, not the cake itself. And so, any encouragement is amplified ten-fold, players are less likely to fear failure, they take more chances, they get more rewards.

All of this is bundled up in the leadership issue, we don't lack for talent in the team. But you do need enough players to know what to do when a plan is knocked off course, in this case, ironically, by scoring a goal. Instead, as soon as we drifted into unknown territory, we looked increasingly lost.

Rotherham 3 Oxford United 1
Even without the gloom, it would have been hard to envisage us winning at Rotherham. The only lingering hope was some sort of reverse pyschology that we would probably go and beat them because that's just the sort of thing we'd do.

The idea that Derek Fazackerley will somehow fix the issues he inherited, implies that Pep Clotet was the sole problem, which he wasn't. He didn't help himself in some cases, but he faced similar problems to the ones Michael Appleton did after we got promoted.  

 
What I think we're seeing, is a reflection of the club's current strategic challenge. Take Rotherham, they have the infrastructure to invest in players that will see them push towards the top of League 1, perhaps above. They are surrounded by teams in a similar situation; Wigan, Blackburn, Charlton, Portsmouth. We are currently performing fairly close to the highest level our infrastructure will allow. Darryl Eales' is sometimes criticsed for losing interest in the club, but I think it's more that he can only fund the club for so long before he needs help. If we are going to progress, the funding needs to grow, often exponentially. I have a massive amount of sympathy for him, he's invested heavily, and his only reward is to invest even more.

As a result, we can compete sometimes in this division, but not all the time, and you can see that in our results. What's worse, is that this year League 1 has so many teams in the mould of Rotherham. There is a relentless procession of decent teams with the ability to push towards the top of the division. It's not so much that we're going backwards, its more that too many others are going forwards at a faster rate. Week after week, while we're trying to fix issues like the manager, limited striking options, a ponderous defence, another team comes along.

People question why John Mousinho still holds down a place in the team and why Charlie Raglan was sent out to Port Vale on loan. I think it's about needing experience to steady the ship. If we'd gone with Raglan and Dickie, chosen by fans because, mostly, they're not Mousinho and Martin, we'd have had a centre-back pairing with one player with little experience and another with little fitness. I believe the hope is that Mousinho is the best hope to steady things.

Relegation seems very unlikely; our poor form alone will not cause that, we would need several other teams to go on winning runs they show no sign of having. If you think we're bad, those below are, by definition, worse. We can't switch off, of course, but we can look at the remaining games as pre-season games for next year. It seemed to work for Shrewsbury last year.

The wrap - Bristol Rovers and Charlton

Bristol Rovers 0 Oxford United 1
You'll often hear people talking about us having aspirations to reach the Championship. It's where we belong, what we deserve. Looking objectively, most teams feel that their rightful level is slightly above that which they're likely to achieve. Tottenham have aspirations of winning the Champions League, Nottingham Forest of being a Premier League club, Eastleigh of making the Football League. As an outsider to those clubs, most people will argue that they might want to bring it down a peg or two.

Typically in order to break out of your natural position, something extraordinary has to happen - for example, Salford's investment by the Peter Lim or Manchester City's takeover by Sheik Mansour. For most clubs, this will never happen, and so, in the main, your normal level is one below where you'd like to be.

Where you believe our natural level is may be defined by your age. If you're an Oxford fan in your forties, for example, you'll have seen us in the Championship and can envisage us being back there. Maybe if you're in your 20s, your formative experiences have been of the Conference and League 2, and League 1 might represent us punching at a level above our natural weight.

But, if you want to benchmark our progress, then look to teams like Bristol Rovers. In the last 30 years we've been in the same division 18 times, and only two divisions apart on five occasions. Rovers represent a kind of parallel us, if we perform better than them, then we're ahead of 'normal' us, perform worse then we're behind where we should be. Like the football equivalent of a tracker mortgage.

So, the win on Saturday was another tick in the box of progress. We are outperforming our norm, not conclusively so, but as a one-off test. The result has us back among teams who genuinely might  aspire to be in the Championship next season. The next three games, against Charlton, Rotherham and Fleetwood should go a long way to confirm whether we're slightly ahead of the norm, or genuinely pushing up to where we feel we deserve to be.

Oxford United 1 Charlton 1
When the news came through that Craig Shakespeare had been sacked by Leicester, I searched my soul for a reaction to the news that Michael Appleton's job was suddenly under threat. The thing was I couldn't find anything.

It's not that I don't feel sympathy for him, he's found himself, once again, at the helm of a listless ship, one which has had three managers in three seasons, each has delivered a miracle of sorts (Nigel Pearson avoiding relegation, Claudio Ranieri winning the title and Craig Shakespeare taking them to the Champions League quarter final). Each has been sacked within months by unforgiving owners. You can't not feel some sympathy for Appleton's predicament given his experiences at Portsmouth, Blackburn and Blackpool.

And if I was forced to watch only one season for the rest of my life, it would be our promotion season in 2015/16. Chances are we will never experience the likes again. We should be eternally grateful for that and for Michael Appleton dragging us out of the dark ages.

But, could Michael Appleton sustain what he did at Oxford for much longer than he did? Finding players for a pittance and selling them on for millions, while still building the club and moving it forward? Last year did feel like we were reaching the peak of our potential, that had we been promoted to the Championship, that it would have been a step too far and that we were performing on the edges of what we could hope to achieve.

In truth, I doubt it we could have kept going in this way. Initially, I felt his departure was a significant blow, but while it was sad to see him go and bring to a close a particularly exciting era, now I'm not as sure. With hindsight, maybe Oxford didn't need Appleton as much as Appleton needed Oxford.

Under Pep Clotet we're beginning to look more robust, more at home against those we aspire to finish above. Charlton, like Bradford, looked a very good team and we comfortably competed with them. But, not only do we now have a settled team and clear options coming from the bench, there is more depth in the squad. Under Michael Appleton we relied heavily on youthful exuberance and talent, now we have John Mousinho, James Henry, Wes Thomas, Simon Eastwood and others; all have the experience to manage and think through games in a way we haven't been able to previously.

We also have a steel that we haven't seen before. Last season, and earlier this, we were being bullied out of games, but Tuesday was intense, blood and thunder with not an inch given, and yet we competed and beyond that, we thrived.

It is possible to want two competing things simultaneously; I would love to relive the Appleton era and by extension I hope that he does well, but I think we've moved on and, if we haven't reached it yet, we are moving into a better place under the new management.
SaveSave

Weekly wrap - Oxford United 0 Bristol Rovers 2, Oxford United 2 Sheffield United 3

The way my timings work for home games I typically see our subs bench before the starting eleven by scrolling through Twitter. When I saw the bench for our game against Bristol Rovers it was clear something was up.

Losing Chris Maguire, Rob Hall, Curtis Nelson and Kane Hemmings, plus Wes Thomas was always going to have a significant impact on the overall quality of the squad. It highlighted other anomalies; Liam Sercombe being too good to be dropped, not quite good enough to oust Ledson and Lundstram from his preferred position. The best defender in the land, Joe Skarz, being somehow less effective than the worst defender in the land, Marvin Johnson. We don’t know whether Conor McAnley is the next Kemar Roofe or the next Jordan Bowery. Add to this Charlie Raglan playing as though he was wearing someone else’s legs and you had dysfunction from the start.

We’re not a team built on a rigid system like an Ian Atkins team where you can take a player out and put another one in without a significant impact. Where players have such a tight brief that as long as you stick to it, you won't go far wrong. Michael Appleton’s teams are more reliant on players playing with freedom and taking responsibility. It makes for a much more entertaining offering, but if you lose some of the talent it’s a real problem.

Rovers exploited the disjointedness by harrying in midfield and pressing on the back-four. Both goals came from Charlie Raglan and Joe Skarz being over-powered. Those positions in recent weeks have gone to Marvin Johnson who doesn’t get put under pressure in the same way because he’s usually on the offensive and Curtis Nelson who is also a ball carrier. Had they been playing, it's possible that Rovers wouldn’t have been given the chances they got.

Michael Appleton seemed to know things were a bit threadbare making only made one substitution despite being 0-2 down at half-time. It almost as if he considered it a tactical defeat.    

I'm sure he didn't quite throw the game; football teams are like blast furnaces; you can’t just turn them on and off. But with so many games to play, I wonder whether he was trying to keep people fresh by not playing Maguire et al. We have a punishing month ahead of Wembley. With all things being equal, we should go into that game as strong favourites, but with the number of games we’ve got, fatigue and injury could jeopardise that game, plus rob one or two of a Wembley experience. I wonder whether the injuries were as bad as suggested, or did Michael Appleton just turn the furnace down a little?

As if by magic all four returned to the starting line for Sheffield United on Tuesday. Only Chris Maguire showed any after-effects of an injury.  There's no doubt Appleton wanted to win this one; we were at home, Sheffield United were top and the spectre of Chris Wilder the club. 

The fact is that Wilder is a better manager, and certainly better than many fans are prepared to admit. What he’s good at is taking big failing fishes in small ponds and using their strength as an asset; he did it with us and he’s doing it with Sheffield United. You have to have a very big and belligerent personality to force a change of direction when you take on a beast like Sheffield United. You have to give him some credit because he's done it time and again.

Ultimately Chris Wilder teams are a Nokia 3310 to our Apple iWatch. The Nokia does simple things really well, we’re more sophisticated, but we don't work quite as well. We competed gamely for two-thirds of the game but we fell away while they kept motoring at the same pace. That's fundamentally the difference between the two teams.

Michael Appleton said after the game that we were 3-4 players away from competing consistently at the top of League 1. It might be stretching things to think that Michael Appleton has conceded the season completely, but he must be aware that on and off the pitch we're barely ready for an unlikely ascent into the Championship. With Cup wins, a Wembley appearance and derby double already in the bag you get the feeling he's pacing himself through the rest of the season.

Weekly wrap - Chesterfield, Birmingham City, Bristol Rovers and Fleetwood Town

Oxford United 1 Chesterfield 1

If this makes any sense, I remember our first game of the last season we had in League 1. The last season at The Manor, Denis Smith had a close season to forget; his attempts at re-signing many of the previous year’s crocks had failed and so, in their place, he signed an even bigger pile of crud. Things weren’t looking good.

In a season which would see finish bottom, concede 100 goals and, of course, get relegated, we opened against Peterborough at home. We dutifully applauding so many new signings that my hands hurt when we finished, though I barely knew any of them.

Though the mood and quality is somewhat different this time around, we have similarly replaced a whole team this summer. The consensus in the car was that Michael Appleton had a good summer with each new signing offering something new and exciting to the squad. The big question that hadn’t been answered in pre-season was whether he could make them gel.

Appleton kept most of his new toys hidden as Saturday’s selection smelt of, if not stability, then experience. It reminded me of our first home game back after the Conference against Bury. We’d expected to storm the division, but we got caught out by a team with more sophistication than we’d anticipated. We didn’t want the same thing to happen here and the focus on experience seemed to suggest that was at the forefront of Appleton’s mind too.

We looked solid enough, Wes Thomas is a kind of Danny Hylton character; he doesn’t make sense context of the squad in general, but looks reliable. Ribiero’s injury was a blow, but Sam Long seems to have had a growth spurt and looked completely settled in his place. The loss of Dunkley was a worry, but it doesn’t sound like he’ll be out for long.

Difficult to know whether we looked at home in League 1. Chesterfield were certainly better than most of League 2, and Swindon from last year, but not a patch on Millwall or Barnsley. With Ched Evans’ signing causing consternation and a laughable crisis involving a fake raffle to deal with, they presumably, like us, will look on mid-table security as success. If they are the benchmark for mid-table, then we should be fine and maybe should hope for more from the season.

Nobody is really expecting promotion, though it would be nice, so ticking off the points rather than storming the division is perfectly acceptable. With three away games coming up, a point is OK. Nobody wants to get to September with people pining anxiously for Hylton, Roofe, Wright, Mullins and O’Dowda.

Birmingham City 0 Oxford United 1

So, for the third year running, we delivered a League Cup giantkilling barely worth of its name. Nobody really knows what Birmingham City are; Premier League pretenders? Relegation certainties? Neither? Can we truly benchmark the result in terms of its achievement? Can we really call this a giantkilling?

City made nine changes from their opening game against Cardiff, such is the sniffiness of Championship managers towards the League Cup. They will talk about the league being a priority as if that sort of pragmatism is supposed to impress us. There are typically three trophies to play for per season (League, FA Cup and League Cup) and on average each team will win a significantly less than one of them. For most teams a couple of memorable wins is what leaves a season in the memory and the cups should offer those moments. But, the idea of glory being is lost on most managers who choose to effectively ignored the cup in order to concentrate on standing still.

I like the Appleton mentality that every game is there to be won, it plays to both the romantic notion of a football team wanting to win every game they play, but, more importantly, it creates a template in which the team learns how to win games. There are precious few players, if any, who can decide when to perform and when not so developing a habit of winning has to be an advantage. Whatever the benefits of resting players are they have to be balanced against the lost opportunity to practice winning games.

Honorable mention has to go to Liam Sercombe. The departure of Jake Wright in the summer brought an era at the club to a close. It wasn’t immediately obvious who might take the captain’s armband when the likes of Sam Long and Josh Ruffels are the longest serving members of the squad. Sercombe must have been in the running for the job.

It’s not so much that he leads by example; he just does what comes naturally with seemingly endless energy. If he’s like that at home, it must drive his fiancé mad, but it must also be completely infectious for young players at the club. If they plan to model themselves on anyone, it’s not the superstar pretentions of the Premier League, it’s the boundless enthusiasm of Liam Sercombe where they should look.

Sercombe has been in the middle of everything that’s been good about the club over year or so, his goal against Birmingham was another chapter in a stellar Oxford career.

Bristol Rovers 2 Oxford United 1

... And just as Sam Long and Liam Sercombe emerge as heroes of the first week, they conspire to make a significant contribution to our first defeat of the season. Brilliant.

The response has been, as you might expect, completely binary. From the innate confidence of promotion to the abject failure of defeat. We are in trouble, or perhaps not.

Frankly, who knows at this stage? I don’t, and nor do you.

Rovers are a bit of a benchmark for us, we’ve always competed at roughly the same level, so a defeat probably feels like we’re falling below a perceived watermark. However, they held onto their core squad and star striker, and we didn’t. So they’ve started the season a bit more established, whereas we’re likely to evolve into it.

Talking of strikers, the good news is that Kane Hemmings got off the mark, which is important despite the result. The figures may be moderate in wider footballing terms, but transfer fees are an unequivocal measure of perceived quality. Goals are an unequivocal measure of the return on that investment. As a striker that brings a pressure that other players won’t feel. If the goals don’t come, then everyone gets restless and the pressure builds. Dealing with that pressure takes a special mindset.

If the goals do come then the pressure goes away. A few more goals in the coming weeks and another jigsaw puzzle will be slotting into place.

It’s been an OK week, and not one that should have been wholly unexpected. One win, one draw, one defeat; fairly predictable. It could have been any order. We were always likely to start more slowly than last year and it was always likely to be a bit harder. This is no time to jump to any conclusions.

Fleetwood Town 2 Oxford United 0  

Some people seem to suggest that our defeat to Fleetwood is a sign of impending crisis. That's two defeats in a row, meaning we've taken only a point from three games, time to panic.

But, in every sense, it is too early to tell whether this is how our season will pan out. It is only our third league game, we've only had one game at home, and, lest we forget, we are playing in a higher league. This seems to be one of our problems; we're 'only' playing Fleetwood, a team that we 'should' be beating. But we forget that while they don't have any heritage at this level, the team is there on merit and by definition they, like everyone else in the division, are going to be harder to defeat than  the teams we faced last year.

When will we know our direction of travel? Looking at the fixtures, I don't think we'll have a clear picture until October at the earliest. The early season is fraught with difficulties,  MK Dons, Sheffield United and Bolton away, Swindon at home. Things look more settled into October, but it's not until January that we start to play batches of teams more like us. We might need to be patient, while the team find their feet.

Perspective and cool heads are needed right now, as Michael Appleton says, it's time to focus on the basics. That said, with Brighton next Tuesday and Chris Wilder's Sheffield United away the following Saturday, a nerve settling result over Peterborough will do everyone the power of good this weekend.

Bristol Rovers wrap - Oxford United 1 Bristol Rovers 2

An intense game, at the end of an intense week, in an intense month of an intense season. It’s not that much of a surprise that something went wrong. It would be tempting to suggest that our performance was a bit flat, but it wasn’t. If anything it was the complete opposite, it was almost euphoric; Lundstram sprayed balls across the pitch, Baldock bombed down the flanks, Roofe wriggled and jiggled in the box. It was feverish.

But, particularly in the second half, all that fervour left great expanses of space in front of the back four which Rovers were able to exploit. Michael Appleton blamed it on youthful enthusiasm and said that we should have absorbed pressure and hit them on the break, which I think is about right; it needed someone to chill everyone out a little.

For our last FA Cup/JPT/League triple header against Forest Green, Yeovil and Carlisle, Michael Appleton was keen to avoid players playing three games in a  week. The same rule didn’t apply for Swansea, Millwall and Bristol Rovers, despite the significant step up in the class of opposition. Only Dunkley and O’Dowda played all three last time, this time around there were eight; Baldock, Mullins, Wright, MacDonald, Sercombe, Lundstram, Maguire and Roofe. As a result we just seemed to lose a bit of discipline; against lesser teams that might not have been an issue, but Rovers were a decent side.

I don’t think it was necessarily the wrong decision to go with stability for these three games, but it was a risk. But, then what were the alternatives? After the game Nick Harris worked his way through the team trying to find the gaps that needed filling in the squad during the transfer window - basically, he couldn’t find any gaps.

This is true if every players plays to their potential in every game, but, it’s not just about replacing weaknesses but changing dynamics. If there is an area to address, it’s bringing experience into the squad. We’re in a run of fixtures against teams competing towards the top of the table, and that’s in addition to the demands of the cup competitions and squad speculation. Things will begin to even themselves out in February and March. I wouldn’t be surprised to see us drop out of the promotion places in the next couple of weeks; with level heads we should be able to ease our way back into things thereafter.

There were those who bemoaned that we had lost the most important game of the trio, which is true, but at the same time had we not had a team which is capable of beating Swansea and Millwall, then I suspect we wouldn’t have been good enough to play in a game which was important to a promotion challenge. The point of the league, though, is that it measures your success over a long period of time, Sunday may have been a blow, but it wasn’t terminal.

Coming up - Bristol Rovers

The drop

It's been a dizzying week, and it concludes with, perhaps, the most important game of all. Rovers sit 5th, so no push-overs, Plymouth and Northampton continue to perform and Portsmouth seem to have revived themselves. But how can we go into this game with anything but the upmost confidence? We're on a tidal wave at the moment, we need to surf it.

Rovers, as they always do, are bringing 2,000+ fans and we have responded after a plea from the chairman. To be honest, I don't think he had that much to worry about, low ticket sales was less to do with ambivalence and more due to the fact that there had been so much focus on Swansea.

But still, if we do push the crowd over 10,000, then perhaps the tide will turn. There has been quite a lot of hand-wringing amongst more long standing fans about how the county appears to be ignoring this amazing season. Maybe it just needed two live TV wins over higher league opposition to tip people over the edge. You don't ask much do you?

Old game of the day

Our first home game as a Football League club, having returned in 2010 was a League Cup tie against Rovers who at the time were in League 1. We came in hope rather than expectation, we slaughtered them.

Bristol Rovers wrap

Most attractive team in English football? The Telegraph article is a linear story of cultural revolution that edits the mess of last year and implies the job is complete. Maybe the journalist, Jim White, believes it, or maybe it was some background PR related to the game against Bristol Rovers, and maybe Dave Jones is involved in fluffing his media mates with stories of our derring do. Still, most modern media really only exists to reinforce your existing prejudices, so we'll take it.

Oddest football club in Britain? Without doubt. I've said before; only three teams have played in the top flight, won a major trophy and fallen out of the Football League over one generation. Luton's demise was via nefarious means, Wimbledon's identity was stolen from them, we just fell apart through our own incompetence.

Accolades of our attractiveness aren't easy for a club like us. It's like getting a new pair of shoes; they wear you more than you wear them. Could we settle into the idea that something is happening and deliver to order on TV?

The result was undoubtedly the one we wanted. The best thing we can do is tick it off and move on. Effective? Yes. Enjoyable? In a League 2 kind of way. But attractive? Not in the classic sense. We looked shaky at the back and occassionally  overwhelmed in midfield - the impact of losing Mullins and O'Dowda. Sercombe's sending off was the result of a general lack of control and discipline in midfield. A systemic problem rather than a moment of madness. With a good referee making the right decisions, it could have been a different story.

The exception came in the only moment that transcended the League 2 fair on show. The club would probably do well to be planning for a post-Roofe world already. I can't imagine a long-distant wallop on TV is the only thing that alerts a club to his talents, but his quality is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. A decent-sized bid at Christmas might be enough; by which point we should have a good feeling for whether this is a sustained challenge or not.

But, chalk it up; Rovers will probably be expecting the play-offs this season, so this is good result against a decent side. It also scrubs away the lost points from our opening day draw with Crawley. Promotion, maybe better, is on, even if it'll sometimes get ugly.

Coming up: Bristol Rovers

The drop

Viva la television! Does featuring on TV mess with a team’s circadian rhythms? Presumably not at Premier League level because although fans pine for the days of 3pm kick-offs, drinks of Bovril and a small ruck with opposing fans in the pub, we are in the second generation of Sky-era footballers totally acclimatised to playing games at all times and on all days.

Lower down and post-Setanta, most players are in a rhythm of Saturday 3pm or Tuesday 7.45pm kick-offs, just like the good old days. Sunday lunchtime is usually reserved for Sunday lunch.

There isn’t a lot of evidence to really understand if we’re adversely effected by a change of match day routine. Last year’s drubbing against Cambridge (Saturday lunchtime) and previous tankings against Southend and Port Vale (both Monday evenings) imply a team that doesn’t cope well with a shift in routine.

Or maybe it’s just that we have the ability to artificially gloss a mundane lower-league fixture. Maybe Sky have chosen us in the past because they thought we were promotion hopefuls capable of putting on a show, whereas in fact we were just whipping boys. We can flatter to deceive like that.

It probably doesn’t help, then, that Bristol Rovers have had a good start and look like they’ve recovered well from the shock of relegation to the Conference. This could be the toughest test yet of our new found confidence; I'm sure it'll be fine.

Old game of the day

I love a bit of Bristol Rovers I do, so it's great to see them back in the League. They always bring a lot of fans, the games always seem to be pretty good and we've won more than our fair share.

This is from 1992, an age of particularly tight shorts. It's not a particularly significant game, in fact, it was really part of my 'lost years' because I was at university. Back then, my weekly Oxford United fix, if I was lucky, would come from a 2 line write up in the Sunday People. Mind you, I was probably at this game because it was early in the season. It's just nice to see The Manor as I remember it.

From the blog

Our first home game back after promotion from the Conference was against Bristol Rovers in the League Cup. It was a glorious night in every sense:

"We’ve seen some bad sides in the last four years; Chester’s wheezing death throes, Wrexham neutered by their recent history, Tamworth running around like five-year- olds chasing a tennis ball in the playground. 

None were quite as awful and shambolic as Bristol Rovers were last night."

Read on.

How's Mickey doing?

Against Wimbledon he was the new messiah, but against Bristol Rovers he was a very naughty boy. So just how is Mickey Lewis doing?

There have only ever been two pieces of football punditry which have stayed with me. That's partly because because most football pundits provide meaningless analysis and a lot down to the fact I'm forgetful and massively disinterested in the science of football tactics.

The first was from Gary Neville, who revealed that Manchester United's fabled ability to score last minute goals comes from a focus on creating a single high quality chance rather than relentlessly pumping the ball into the box. The second was from Graham Taylor who said that anyone can organise a team, only a few can get it to score goals.

He said this after one of his stints coaching a team of celebrities in Sky's The Match. The Match had a great concept - a team of young, fit celebrities are professionally coached to play a team of overweight ex-professionals. What the celebrities lost in skill, they gained in fitness. What should have resulted was an even game.

But, in three years, the celebrities scored one goal, a fluke. They could be organised and pass a ball around in a semi-competent way, but Taylor couldn't train them to score when up against real footballers, albeit fat ones.

Which, in essence, is the challenge that faces Mickey Lewis. As a coach, he has proved more than competent organising a team, but can he up his game to win enough games to get us up?

After Wimbledon, the post-match phone-in for the mentally unsettled speculated that Lewis was worthy of immediate appointment. In fact, you could easily have deduced the Wimbledon result had secured us all of our 49 points on its own.

That win was generally heralded as a new dawn; positive, happy, more attacking and entertaining. There's no evidence to suggest that's true. Against Wimbledon we mustered 2 shots and enjoyed 48%  possession; compared to the 5 home games before that, our possession had only been worse once (against Plymouth) and our shots better only twice (Scunthorpe and Dagenham).

The difference, against Wimbledon, was that we were more efficient with the little we created. We probably shouldn't rely on Tom Newey's ghosted runs for goals in the future but David Connolly, a parting gift from Chris Wilder, could be the difference we need.

There have been studies done on the relationship between a working environment and productivity. It was proved that if you put plants into an office, productivity increases. However, it was also proved that if you take plants away, productivity increases. The conclusion is that it is not the plant that improves productivity, it is the change of environment. That it was the change we were benefitting from against Wimbledon, not Lewis' tactical ability.

The subsequent trips to Bury and Bristol Rovers gave us two important points, but we didn't quite have the extra guile to eek out a win in either game. It's easy to be greedy, we've been so good away from home you might reasonably expect at least 4 points.

Between Lewis and Melville and a squad of players with their heads screwed on, it should be possible to hold things together long enough to reach the play-offs and perhaps better. But, it will be a close run thing.

Longer term, however, I don't see Lewis having the ability to adapt the team's composition and tactics to take us much beyond where we are. Aside from his tactical abilities, he's always benefitted from being 'good old Mickey', loved by everyone, if he is going to be manager and he is going to be successful, then he needs to be happy being disliked because one day he'll have to make unpopular decisions.

So, Mickey's doing alright and, for the foreseeable future, it wouldn't surprise me to see him continue to do alright, but as for the long term; I think we've got to look elsewhere.

Is it time to start pointing fingers?

Playing a blame game is very tempting, but rarely particularly helpful. But after two home defeats in a row, and a run of five without a win, the knives are out and everyone is sniping at each other. So who is at fault for our current predicament?

The manager

There's little doubt that Chris Wilder is under pressure and it's difficult to see quite how he can pull the fans around to give him sustained support. Each run of form feels like a patch over a much longer decline. Like an old car that breaks down more and more and becomes more expensive to fix; there's a point at which you just need to buy a new car. That said, managers rarely get the opportunity to turn their team around, they're fired before they get to that situation, so there are few reference points to imagine him going from zero to hero.

On Tuesday, against Fleetwood, there was a sense that it wasn't so much that he should be fired, more that he should be released from the purgatory of the situation he finds himself in. Though there are harsh critics of Wilder, only the truly demented will deny that he's been dealt a tough hand. Money is tight, the pitch is terrible and injuries have desecrated us; it's not an easy ride. One bloke behind me bemoaned that Lewis Montrose was "Another Wilder choice" ignoring that every player in the squad is a Wilder choice, even the good ones. A fit Ryan Clarke, Andy Whing, Michael Duberry, Peter Leven and Tom Craddock - all Wilder choices - would have undoubtedly given Fleetwood a better game - most of Wilder's good decisions are not currently available.

He looks a bit of a spent force at the moment, without ideas and without anyone to turn to for support.

The owner

In the main I trust Lenagan's ownership. He has a track record in running decent professional sports clubs and is clearly a successful businessman. Like many very clever people he seems able to process lots of information and distill his options into a series of apparently simple yes/no decisions. Emotion and indecision doesn't come into it; as long as you're not too risk averse, this is a good thing for running a business.

But Lenagan's clear thinking comes at a cost; he lacks the empathy of people who are less clear thinking than him, which means he struggles to understand what makes football fans; with their baked in irrationality, tick. As a result he appears cold hearted and distant and some of his decisions - such as the signing of Luke McCormick - seem ill-judged. What's more, he's almost too honest. Suggesting that some players have been signed without a medical during the most acute injury crisis in several generations leaves him vulnerable. And, at the fan forum, failing to mention that the club were about to hand over their shirt sponsorship space to a local charity was a missed opportunity for some good PR.

The landlord

Firoka have a lot to answer for. There is more to being the landlord of a professional sports stadium then providing a patch of grass, or as it has become now, rutted mud and sand. The science of hosting multiple sports exists; Cardiff, Wigan, Swansea and Hull all successfully run stadia featuring both rugby and football. And Firoka have actively sought a rugby tenant for some years. So this season's difficulties were all predicable. Kassam isn't providing a multi-sport facility; it's a football pitch with rugby being played on it. The Firoz Kassam business model is the same throughout his empire; identify a desperate group of people; whether that be rugby and football teams or asylum seekers and provide them with a bare minimum service. In his purely transactional world, he ignores the benefit of collaboration - better facilities mean larger crowds mean more money and higher rents.

There is a chance to sort this out over the close season so that it never happens again, but the state of the pitch could be the route cause of a whole lot of our problems. If it does result in the manager losing his job, key players getting injured and crowds dropping, then Firoka should (but won't) be held to account.

The team

There's no lack of commitment in the team, and no lack of quality, at least not in the treatment room. We just can't keep the good players on the pitch and the likes of Potter and Chapman need good players around them to help them perform. With so much going against them, the sense of helplessness, the lack of confidence is becoming overwhelming. What's more worrying is that the season doesn't really offer any respite from the gloom. There's no cup or derby to distract us from the solemn trudge from here to May.

The injury problem has been so extensive that you can look at it two ways; either it points towards a systemic failure in the club's sports science set up, or it's so bizarre that you cannot imagine that you'll be inflicted with it again for a generation. Certainly the club should tighten up in giving players fitness tests before signing them, and the investment in sports science promised at the end of last season needs to begin paying dividends. But there have been a surprising number of in-game 'impact' injuries, particularly at home in the first half. While players may be carrying injuries into games that they aggravate, a lot of these injuries do seem to be the result of bad luck; or perhaps a badly rutted pitch.

The fans

Whilst understandably angry and frustrated, the fans have been spoilt in recent years; Wilder has produced three derby victories, a win at Wembley and, in his first season, a thrilling, if ultimately doomed dash to the play offs. We expect to be entertained. During the latter months of the Kassam reign the fans were in a similar rut; in a game against Rochdale the crowd spontaneously started chanting and banging the many empty seats around them. The fans had taken it upon themselves to claw back the club.

The same sense of helplessness, coupled with a degree of expectation, means the the fans are sitting back, or not even turning up. It's certainly hard to raise yourself when faced with defeat after defeat, but sitting back and waiting to be entertained, is not going to help.

… And the solution?

Don't fire the manager. At least not yet. Admittedly, Wilder's future is an entirely valid discussion to have. It might make us feel better for five minutes because it'll give us a sense of doing something, but it'll instantly lose us 4 years of collective learning, and if Lenagan is to be believed then it'll cost us £200,000 in compensation and recruitment fees, money that could easily be spent on something more positive.

You can't isolate our performances down to Wilder's decisions alone. So what could you do that would address the influencing factors? I would appoint a new chairman. Whilst Kelvin Thomas may be a little devil-may-care in this age of austerity, somebody who can dedicate time to engaging with Firoka, provide some support for the manager and give the fans something to get behind. This could create a galvanising force would pay huge dividends.

At the beginning of the beginning

At Christmas parties people accuse me of being boring because I can't force myself into dancing. What these people don't believe is that I particularly like dancing. The reason you won't find me dancing at a Christmas party is because the music doesn't make me want to dance and I've learnt not to force something I don't naturally want to do.

 I'm much the same when it comes to the new season. The first game of the season doesn't be particularly excite me anymore. I tend to let the season's story emerge over a few weeks and draw me. It can be as late as October before I'm fully engaged.

I used to love the first day of the season, a burst of relief after months of dormancy. Like most people, I gave far too much meaning to the first 90 minutes. But then, I remember 1999 and winning 2-1 at Stoke. Steve Anthrobus scored on his debut and the Oxford Mail heralded his new partnership with Derek Lilley. It turns out that was the beginning of a two year capitulation; Anthrobus' goal one of 4 he scored in that time. This game is largely responsible for me not believing the hype of a new season.

That said, I think Saturday's 2-0 win over Bristol Rovers is significant. In the first six weeks of the season, points look hard to come by and three points away from home against a big spending opponent will go a long way to recovering Chris Wilder's battered stock.

Looking at our opening fixtures, I hadn't anticipated us being particularly high up the table early on, although I do expect us to come back later in the year. However, a poor opening will provide others with the evidence they need that Wilder has lost it. If the pressure to make a change grows, then it is conceivable that he would move on before Christmas. Three points against Bristol Rovers on Saturday will help allay the risk of that kind of knee jerk reaction

This season to looks stronger than last year with Wycombe, Rotherham, Fleetwood, Northampton, Chesterfield, Bristol Rovers and Southend all expecting promotion with Cheltenham and Torquay being as hopeful as us of a play-off place.

So there are ten clubs who would expect to be in the promotion and play-off places at the end of the year with only 7 places to fill. It's going to be a long tough season and more than ever we need to judge the performance of the club on the whole season and not just parts of it or even individual games

But, before we get into the season proper we need to get through the next few weeks unscathed. Picking up points early on will go a long way to achieving that initial aim.

Oxford United 3 Bristol Rovers 0

After last week’s freak heatwave, I looked out from the South Stand on Saturday at the slate grey sky with the floodlights glowing. Down below Simon Heslop received a pass, a feint shadow was caste on the pitch. My heart warmed.

We are the people of the gloaming. As the summer departs most recede to their houses, their weekends defined by X Factor and Strictly. We, on the other hand, appear blinking into the gloom; our weekends have purpose and focus.

Saturday’s 3-0 win over Bristol Rovers was English football at its very best.

It didn’t need to be like that, of course, neither side could boast particularly stellar form – us at home or them away. It was no local derby, no make or break.  Ticket prices weren’t slashed, like the day’s other big League 2 crowd at Bradford. On paper, it was just another lower league fixture. But, with good marketing by both clubs we got a sizable crowd and atmosphere that was a reminder of football’s good old days.

The surprise isn’t so much the size of the crowd, more that it doesn’t happen more often.

On the way in, Radio Five were in discussion with Joey Barton. As is so often the case with media-hate figures, Barton came over as articulate and thoughtful. He recognised that elite sportsmen, footballers in particular, are oddballs. They have to be, they spend their lives eating grilled chicken and pasta, they do their job with 50,000 people screaming bile at them and sports science means they have reached a point of physical fitness that makes them more machines than men. They have mind-boggling salaries, preposterously big houses and pneumatic wives. Barton recognises how bizarre this is, not to excuse his behaviour, but helps to explain it. If he wanted to play sport for sport, he’d have taken up rugby league, he said.

And yet, Premier League players are considered the definition of perfection – good looking, rich, skilful. But they are odd, as in, not typical.

On Friday, I turned over to see that England had qualified for Euro 2012. England games are now relegated to Friday nights, when QI, Outnumbered and Would I Lie To You are all perfectly adequate viewing alternatives. England had just conceded a two-goal lead against a micro-nation, but were slapping each other on the back stony faced, as a job well done. Although live on Sky the game had no coverage on terrestrial TV. You have to wonder, who were they doing it for, and who really cared?

The oddballs of the Premier League are achieving things I can’t bring myself to care about. It is increasingly pointless and joyless. I can’t have heroes who are over-evolved freaks, I want them to be flawed, I want them to take the tube once in a while and have mortgages.

It helps when you’re successful, well, competitive at least. It is easier to drag yourself to a game when there’s the prospect of a win. Ultimate Support Saturday helped sustain the momentum that has been provided by a good start to the season, but, it wasn’t just the result; if we’d lost or drawn it would still have been worthwhile.  

Yellows 6 Bristol Rovers 1

We’ve seen some bad sides in the last four years; Chester’s wheezing death throes, Wrexham neutered by their recent history, Tamworth running around like five-year- olds chasing a tennis ball in the playground.

None were quite as awful and shambolic as Bristol Rovers were last night. At least the others had good reason to be bad. Rovers seemed comfortable on the ball, athletic and strong, but they fell apart every time they tried to produce something. Like they couldn’t get their legs to do what their brains were asking. A kind of football Alzheimer’s.

I became preoccupied with it; I even gave an involuntary groan when Green latched onto one of Heslop’s through-balls. My new compadres in the SSU must have thought I was a Bristolian. I guess I’m just programmed to be sensitive to failure.

It made the game curious to watch. Everything we did worked; we were rampant, it could genuinely have been 8 or 9. Can we really have been that good? Trips to the Kassam are all about bulging veins and chest beating, the enjoyment of watching Oxford has come from the release from the agony of the game as it has about the thrill of victory. We’re not used to enjoying an exhibition in passing moving and finishing.

Last time we scored six was against Eastbourne and that included two penalty saves from Billy Turley. Before that, against Halifax, in 2001, we still struggled despite them being bottom of the league destined for the Conference. It was only when they were reduced to nine men that we took over. Before that? 6-0 against Shrewsbury… and then every goal was a header. Scoring six isn’t exactly conventional, but with us it’s been more that 25 years since we had a six-goal haul that was just, um, normal.

The evening reminded me of watching the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park one cool August evening 8 years ago. A thoroughly enjoyable evening out in warm friendly surroundings, but I’m buggered if I could work out what was going on.