Northampton Town wrap - Northampton Town 1 Oxford United 0

Inevitable? Yes, the longer a run goes on the more likely it is to end. Being unbeaten for 15 games isn’t normal, so we’ve been getting closer to defeat with every passing week. Only an improbable fightback at Luton, a missed penalty at Mansfield and a wonder strike at Bristol Rovers has prevented this from coming sooner. It’s not a question of luck, it's just maths.

There was a groaning inevitability that it had to happen against Chris Wilder. But it’s not because of some mystical hoodoo, he can organise teams to beat the best on any given day. That’s his thing; in the three whole seasons he was with us in the Football League he managed to win away at the eventual league champions every year. This was the wrong team at the wrong time.

You might curse our luck with injuries and suspensions, although this is also inevitable. Most of the season will have that feeling of never quite being at full strength. Professional sports people are always in pain because they’re constantly at the breaking point between optimum performance and being injured or exhausted. It’s the same with teams, they’re always broken or close to broken in some way. We need to get used to it rather than wait for it to pass.

On this basis, criticism of Ryan Taylor is slightly unfair. He's never going to be a direct replacement for Kemar Roofe. No team at our level can have a bank of Roofe and Hylton back-ups. Taylor's primary role is to create space for others - Roofe, Hylton, McDonald, O’Dowda - and so judging him solely on his goals and his Roofeness is not right. Roberts, on form and fit, would be an interesting partnership with Taylor; but those calling for him to replace Taylor are asking for a Roberts of last year, it doesn’t sound like he’s in the same place at the moment.

What next? We keep going. When Bradley Wiggins won his Tour de France in 2012, Team Sky employed a particular tactic in the mountains. Wiggins isn’t fast or explosive like typical climbers. However, he knew that if someone attacked, they would eventually slow. Wiggins’ trick was to maintain an average pace faster than that of his rivals so that if they did ride away from him, he would, like a diesel engine, eventually pull them back. Aside from the physical challenge, the mental challenge is not to panic, that expends energy particularly if you find yourself pushing too hard.

We’ve dropped back to 8th, which risks all the old insecurities re-appearing. But despite everything, we are still in title winning form. The challenge is to keep plugging away.

Coming Up: Northampton Town

The drop

I don’t like the comparisons between Michael Appleton and Chris Wilder. It’s not a zero based game; just because one is good, doesn’t make the other bad. Chris Wilder is one of only thee managers to achieve promotion in my lifetime, which puts him among the greats. Anyone who experienced the rush of 2009/10 should remember the time as one that was as good as any we’ve had at the club.

On that basis, I'll always hope Chris Wilder does well, wherever he is. That said, he seems to be in the second phase of his time at Northampton. Having saved them from relegation and then stabilised them last year, he’s now on that difficult second album of taking them on to promotion. Like his time at Oxford, achieving this extra 10% looks set to be a challenge. 

None-the-less, as with all Wilder teams, they will prove a challenge to break down, nobody should be expecting an easy ride. The loss of Kemar Roofe is obviously a blow, he's the magician in a tight game. But, with O'Dowda back we go into the game in rude health; this is part 2 of a trilogy of games that will test our mettle as promotion contenders. Part 1, against Bristol Rovers, was effective if a little hairy; something similar will do on Saturday.

Old game of the day

Northampton Town, a team we seem to live in parallel with Oxford. During the Ian Atkins years, he basically schlepped his old Northampton squad down the A43 to play for us. Now, of course, there's a slow reconstruction of the 2010 promotion team at Sixfields, although they're in competition with Eastleigh on that front.

This is from 1996, the promotion year, and an actual, proper, FA Cup run. We'd beaten Dorchester 9-1 in the first round and followed it up with this before going on to beat Millwall. We eventually went out to Nottingham Forest, in a heroic fight. This was the only home game I missed that season, which still lives with me 19 years on.

From the blog

"On Saturday we came into the game against Northampton with a degree of trepidation about the home-form hoodoo that hung over us. And then the team put in a performance and delivered a result which conformed entirely to the form book. If I'd watched that game on my iPad with the sound down as the Hairy Bikers made a lightly toasted Kirsty Allsop and brie cassoulet would the anxiety have been the same? Just how many layers are there in watching football?"

Read on

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.

Maths of the Day - August

Appletonometer

The Appletonmeter is the rolling accumulation of points over 46 league games. That is, a full season. We ended last season with 61 points, so every game we play this season, drops one from the start of last. For example, our draw against Crawley at the start of the month means our opening day defeat to Burton last year no longer counts, as a result we gain a point. It judges Appleton’s overall performance by discounting most variances like time of year, home and away bias and seasonal factors. Cup games aren't included because one season we could have drawn Dagenham at home the next Chelsea away; that would skew the results.

The good news is that the Appletonometer has increased from 61 points to 69 in the year to the end of August. The less good news is that it couldn’t have been worse; we didn’t gain a single point at the start of last season until the draw against Dagenham at the end of August. Our first win wasn't until mid-September.

With such a handicap, it’s no surprise that we’ve yet to string together a 46 game sequence which would take us into the play-offs (70 points), but we're close. Still, as far as the Appletonometer goes, his star is in the ascendency.

Five game form

Five game form calculates our accumulated points over a rolling five game sequence since Appleton came to power. It’s a better indication of where we’re at today, rather than being handicapped by the poverty of our form a year ago.

The graph shows, unsurprisingly, that we've been in our best spell of form since Appleton’s arrival. For a period, it would have been good enough for the title. It dipped a little as the wins from last year were replaced by draws from this, but with the win over Yeovil, we end the month in automatic promotion form.

Run rate

The run rate calculates the accumulation of points over the season and then benchmarks it against a typical straight-line promotion trajectory. It's useful because it discounts short-term form. For example, Leyton Orient have maximum points so far, but it would be a miracle if they did that all season. This works on the basis that 87 points gets you the title, 81 points gets promotion and 70 gets you into the play-offs. We don’t factor in relegation points, at least not yet.

So early in the season, the differences between the title, promotion and the play-offs is small, so individual results can have a significant effect. After a slow-ish start, the win over Notts County propelled us into the play-off zone, but we dipped back out after the draw with Mansfield. Yeovil took us into the zone of automatic promotion, which is a very good place to be, if we can keep it up.

Yeovil wrap - Oxford United 2 Yeovil Town 0

I enjoyed retro day, it’s not easy making every match a genuine occasion in the modern game. We sit in the same seats with the same people having been bombarded by information all week. There’s very little novel about a home game. By Saturday we’re almost exhausted by football and come to be entertained, but not to participate.

I think that contributes towards the fact that up to the end of Saturday night just seven Premier League fixtures had been won by home teams all season. Tactics play a part, but crowds are a factor. They can become so apathetic that any home advantage is eroded.

But this initiative gave us something to contribute to; find your best shirt, share your best memory, unearth your oddest memorabilia. It creates momentum and energy through mass participating.

The hive-mind of Oxford fans acts as a binding force. We all remember the big stuff, but this sort of thing brings to the surface fragments of memories you’ve forgotten. It reminds you why you support the club in the first place. And because each fragment is a reminder of your own history, it reminds you of what makes you who you are. Your fellow fans are looking after your memories for you.

My personal highlight was a bloke in a long-sleeved red adidas away shirt from 1980 which tweaked so many faded memories. I’ve always loved away kits, the novelty of seeing your badge on a different colour always feels slightly exotic. I love long sleeve shirts because for years only the players wore them; replicas were always short sleeved. And, 1980/81 was the season I started watching Oxford regularly. It reminded me of being 8 years old, watching Andy Thomas and devouring each home programme for photos of away adventures to Newport or Lincoln. All of that from one glance across the South Stand Upper.

The theme, the game; there was a genuine sense of a phase ending. Six games in less than a month have propelled us into the season, now we can ease to a cruising speed without the angst of last year.

I don’t think we’ve met anyone we might consider promotion contenders, or are in that kind of form, unless we’re that team and we’re making everyone else look ordinary. It’s possible, we look comfortable at home and solid away. Nobody seems too carried away but neither is anyone shying away from the idea that promotion is the objective, or possible. There’s a satisfying confidence that all successful teams have.

The next few weeks will tell us more; Bristol Rovers and Portsmouth await. We may be leaving this phase of the season in a happy place, but the next one is just around the corner, and may be tougher.

Coming Up: Yeovil Town

The drop

Perhaps Yeovil are a different team to the one we last encountered, but I've always thought of them as a model of what I wish we were. Last time we met them they were on their way to a place in the Championship while we were in the Conference. Now we meet as equals, but, it seems, on very different trajectories.

Three defeats preceded a narrow 3-2 win over Luton on Saturday. Luton themselves seem to be buckling under the pressure of being among the pre-season favourites; that was the second 2-goal lead they've thrown away in as many weeks. 

Are Yeovil struggling with the pressure resulting from their double relegation? If they are, then that helps us, this will be game five for us of which three have come down from League 1. There appears little to fear from those who have come down and hitting them when they're still getting acclimatised is an advantage. Only Leyton Orient seem to affecting a decent bounce back; but I'll take one out of four in the context of our promotion chances. From our perspective, our no-more-than-solid away form means that three points is the requirement today.

OUFC Retro 

The game is a designated OUFC Retro day. I approve, although in a season styled wholly on nostalgia it may be difficult to tell the difference between this and every other game this year. Plus, if you've ever spent any time in the South Stand Upper, you'll know that Matchwinner, Manor Leisure and Carlotti are not considered retro, but are the brands of a modern dandy.

Me? If I can be bothered to go into the loft, I'll probably go with the 1993 centenary shirt or this New Balance beauty from 1998. 

Old game of the day 

There was one point when Yeovil Town were set to do an Oxford United and become a plucky over-achiever dooking it out amongst the big boys. Instead, they seem to be regressing back to their more natural state.

This is from 2009 in the FA Cup; in some ways it captured the spirit of the time. Altogether a very proper FA Cup tie, even if it's slightly galling for us to be considered a giant killer.

From the blog

As good as that win was, my reaction to it was a pretty angry one:

"I suppose that Saturday’s win over Yeovil was a giant killing, but that seems to be a technicality only. Even ITV seemed at a bit of a loss in how to deal with the result. Ned Boulting’s knowing sneer, a constant presence when reporting on Tour de France cheats, was on display to let us know that the institution of FA Cup giant killing was being defiled."

Read on

Sheffield Wednesday wrap - Sheffield Wednesday 1 Oxford United 0

If you Google 'Hillsborough', as you might expect, you get pictures of people being crushed to death in 1989. The word is synonymous of a grim past, where it was once a step from Wembley.

Following a lower league club in the cup can become a tour of what feels like abandoned religious temples. Look around and you can see the echoes of something once glorious, but it lacks people to give it purpose. A great dinosaur, now extinct.

It's partly because football is no longer a predominantly a social activity, its a form of entertainment. Fewer people go because it defines them, more people choose to attend based on the prospect of getting value for money. Will they be entertained? If that prospect is remote, then people stay away. We're not particularly box office in Sheffield.

There's a lingering feeling with teams like Sheffield Wednesday, as to what their point is. Are they preying for a rich benefactor to come along and propel them forward? Are they just treading water  because that's fractionally less sad than giving up? And then, for us, is giving them a game an act of heroism or a missed opportunity? Is it neither?

Michael Appleton seemed to be similarly conflicted; was the deliberately weakened team a sign that he wasn't interested in the fixture? Did it suggest that there are more important objectives to focus on? It was understandable given this was our sixth game in just 18 days, but in the name of consistency, I don't like the idea that you pick and choose the games you compete for.

Some tried to read things into Jake Wright's omission, but given the other changes, including nailed on starters Roofe and Hylton, I suspect this was a simple case of giving him a rest rather than anything tactical. As he approaches 30 he probably needs to manage his fitness and recovery more closely these days.

In the end it was one of those harmless defeats in Yorkshire that seem to have peppered our cup campaigns since our return to the league. We weren't humiliated, so there's no real risk to any confidence we've built up in recent weeks. We're also not burdened another fixture to clutter up the schedule. Newcastle might have been fun, but it's a bloody long way away. Yeovil on Saturday represents the end of a frantic opening month, now we're out of the cup, it's time to settle into a more controlled rhythm.

Coming Up: Sheffield Wednesday

The drop

A distraction or an opportunity? The problem with the start of the season is the mush of league and League Cup results makes it hard to fully know how you’re getting on. To lose to Sheffield Wednesday tonight is to lose an unbeaten record, does that mean anything? Logically, no, Wednesday aren’t on any critical path to promotion, but emotionally, maybe; the template of success driven out of performances against Notts County and Luton will be eroded a little bit by a defeat. Suddenly, Yeovil becomes a high pressure game; we don’t want to lose two on the trot.

And if we win? Well, that’s another step closer to an inevitable defeat – unless we’re planning on winning the trophy. It might be a Premier League team next, and they could really remind us of our own mortality. But, on the other hand, we did play West Brom last year and that ended in the almost perfect defeat, if such a thing can exist.

Really, when it comes to Cup games, you want to be like a pacemaker in a middle distance race. We want to heroically lead the race for a period before stepping off the track before you’re consumed and humiliated by your better opponents.

 

OUFC retro

Nineteen years ago we played Sheffield Wednesday in the League Cup, so history is repeating itself tonight. This one is a proper treat, the first leg at Hillsborough ended 1-1 with a Paul Moody goal. The Manor was rocking for the return leg, one of the last times it was like this for a cup tie.

Mansfield wrap - Mansfield Town 1 Oxford United 1

Teams that win promotion show a relentless quality. If you consider the difference between promotion and the play-offs last year was one point and you spread that across 46 games, that’s just 0.02 points per game. The good teams and the less good teams broadly do all the same things; difference between success and failure is right in the margins.

I remember playing Crawley in 2012 when they were promoted. We had aspirations for promotion ourselves and played with a fantastic intensity. It felt like we were playing at maximum capacity which was great to watch. But what we considered to be extraordinary was what they considered to be under-par. We led, but in the last minute, with a certain inevitably, they equalised. Extrapolate those moments of marginal difference across the entire season and the margin grows considerably. We ended the season 16 points behind Crawley.

Maintaining that intensity throughout a season is the biggest challenge facing any team hoping for promotion. This is particularly true against teams like Mansfield. In many ways, this was the first true test of our potential. It was away, it was off the back of a top-notch performance, it was against one of those teams it’s difficult to get too excited about. What drives the performance is not the opposition, but the inner intensity to perform, which in turn, is driven by the objective.

So, as a result of the draw with The Stags, are we demonstrating that relentlessness and intensity? Not yet, but there's no doubt we're robust. We've now played four games and conceded first in all of them. And yet we remain unbeaten. That's a team with a solid resolve. Those statistics point towards a team who should be harbouring ambitions for the play-offs. Going beyond that requires a bit more; Jim Smith used to say that to win the title you had to win at home and draw away. The draw against Crawley on the first day of the season means we're slightly behind that sort of run rate. As a result, as encouraging as the signs might be, the jury remains out as to whether we're quite at the point where an automatic spot, or better, is realistic.

Coming up: Mansfield Town

The drop 

It doesn’t feel like it, but Tuesday was only our third League game of the season; two against just-relegated teams and one against someone that is heavily tipped to do well. And we’re doing more than fine, unbeaten – plus the destruction of a Championship side - and with a dizzying performance against Notts County under our belt.

And now for something completely different. When Saturday Comes’ season preview had a lot of fans, including our own representative, predicting a mid-table finish for their club. It illustrates a malaise pervasive across League 2 which hopes for the best and expects, if not the worst, something rather uninspiring.

Mansfield, up next, is one of those teams whose initial requirement is basic survival. These are teams that are harder to beat; more conservative, less interested in putting on a show, more interested in picking up points. There is a huge wodge of these teams, each one needs knocking down, its relentless and exhausting, and not very pretty. In some ways, the real season starts here.  

Old game of the day 

Mansfield Town, one of those teams that were once an irrelevance to us, but who now seem to be locked into a similar trajectory. This is from 2008 and you could argue that it was the first game after we'd hit rock bottom. We'd just gone out of the Cup to Torquay, which resulted in Darren Patterson being relegated. Jim Smith was in charge for this one, which was live on Setanta, and therefore probably played at 3am on a Tuesday morning or something. Shortly afterwards we recruited Chris Wilder and the revival was on.

From the blog

In 2012 we went to Mansfield with James Constable sitting on 99 goals. He went on to score his 100th goal; a bona fide modern Oxford legend.

"You hope, of course, that perhaps Gary Twigg can be the next John Aldridge, or Alex Fisher the next Paul Powell. I've lost count of the number of wingers I hoped would turn out to be the next Joey Beauchamp. 

Yes, Courtney Pitt, you failed me."

Read on.

Notts County wrap - Oxford United 3 Notts County 1

There’s a benign quality about early season mid-week football. Unlike later in the season, the mood is 90% blind optimism, 10% grim pragmatism. There’s a freshness, everyone looks a bit more tanned and relaxed, like they’re enjoying rather than fighting life. The crowd has a few more children who are still on their holidays, one or two casuals curious as to what happens in these parts, and even the odd foreign student wanting the experience of watching English football.

We’ve had many good nights like these; beating Bristol Rovers and Bournemouth in the League Cup, Swindon in the JPT, league wins over St Albans and Cambridge. Nights where all is right with the world.

This was like that, but a bit more so. We looked comfortable enough from the word go, knocking the ball between midfield and attack, little flicks and back heels. But with the ball running true and the weather so mild, we needed pace and creativity. Nobody was giving us the urgency to get on and win the game. Pat Hoban is a battering ram and we may still need him in the trenches in the coming months, but this wasn't his kind of game.

County looked OK, but lacked the anger of a club scorned by their relegation, one that wants to dominate teams and win back their rightful place in a higher division. Beyond one brilliant set-piece - and their goal - they looked passive.

The injection of pace and enthusiasm that the game needed came from Callum O'Dowda. It's rare that you see a player materially turn a game on its head the moment he comes on. Not just his goal, but the way he went about his work. That set the tone for others to follow.

What resulted after was easily Michael Appleton's best performance at home, and one of the best we've seen since we came back into the League. Some games - cup games, derbies - generate their own energy, Chris Wilder was a master at channelling that. But this was one of those games which could have generated a marshmallow atmosphere. Historically, we have become consumed in this ennui, but this was very different. A victory not of angst and relief, but a pure ode to joy.

Coming up: Notts County

The drop

There are typically two reactions to relegation; the first is the development of a sense of entitlement to return from where you've dropped. A few good results early in the season and it's easy to get into a rhythm that drives you to a successful season. We've seen this with teams like Chesterfield, Shrewsbury and Swindon in recent years. The other is the sudden panic that 'the drop' doesn't actually mean 'to the bottom' and that there is much further to fall. Bristol Rovers, Carlisle, Portsmouth and Hartlepool have all experienced that.

Early season form is an important factor in determining which type of team you'll be. It's easy to become optimistic during close season and believe that you're about to face a wad of inferior teams. But the differences between top and bottom are far smaller than you expect. County are probably still working out how things are; their opening win over Stevenage will have given them confidence, but their defeat to new derby bedfellows Mansfield will have been a shock on a number of levels. It's a bit like our constant denial that Wycombe isn't a derby; to some extent to admit it is to admit how far we've fallen. To be beaten at home by them is a deeper pain still.

So this is important for a number of reasons. We need a win, of course. We also need to give a potential promotion rival a bloody nose to knock them off of their stride before they get into it. 

Old game of the day

We haven't played County for nine years, so not a lot to choose from in the archive. I'm going with this from 1994, a time that football kit design forgot. This was our last game of the season and the day we went down after a decade in the top two divisions. Mathematically it was still possible to stay up, but nobody in their right mind relies on maths.

But, it was also notable for a moment of Joey Beauchamp magic in his last game before moving to the Premier League where he would go on to play for England and win the World Cu... oh.

Luton wrap - Luton Town 2 Oxford United 2

‘We’d have lost that last year’ one person inevitably said after the big comeback draw against Luton. It’s one of those phrases that has seeped into the lexicon in recent years. 

We’d have lost that most years, I’d wager. It was as freaky as it was welcome. Jerome Sale and Nathan Cooper rightly highlighted the fact that Oxford and Luton share many common traits. We’ve both been at the top and the bottom, we both think we deserve more, we both think that there are other forces at work that prevent us from progressing. We’re both fragile, and that’s key because while others have exploited our own mental fragility in the past, this time it was our turn to be the beneficiary. When Kemar Roofe drilled in the first goal, it stuck the knife in and as Dave Brailsford said of Chris Froome's Tour de France win - once you've stuck the knife in, you have to keep twisting. 

Sale and Cooper also got it right when they said that if you win at places like Luton, then you should be fighting for the title, if you draw; promotion should be your goal. ‘Should’ is the operative here. This season should be about promotion not just the isolated ‘buzz’ of freaks and one-offs. We’ve had a few of those in recent years and they become a vague memory by the time we hit May and are soft pedalling our way into the summer.   

What it does do is it helps paint a picture of a type of success; that if our backs are against the wall, then there’s no reason to give up. That’s worth having in our locker for when things hairy. It needs to be applied properly - we don’t want to get ourselves in that position in the first place; so it’s an escape pod only to be used in emergencies. Let's not forget that even going into injury time, the most likely outcome was a defeat. In most cases in the future, that's what we'll get; nothing. 

And this is not the product of magic, spirit or any of that nonsense, it's hard work, application, good tactics and intelligent play. One thing that Gary Neville said about Manchester United’s fabled ability to score last minute goals was that where most teams lose their heads when chasing a game, their key was to focus on creating one really high quality chance. Underpinning their mythical status as comeback kings was the application of high quality football. Or, if you like, doing what they should always be doing.

I wasn’t expecting us to get much out of Luton, so the point is a good one, but in the context of promotion it claws back one of the two dropped against Crawley. If that sounds downbeat, it’s not meant to be, but promotion is about being relentlessly effective for a long time. Historically, we've been pretty bad at that. But, that’s the real objective.

Coming up: Luton Town

Next up is Luton Town, according to the pre-season predictions, this one could be an early sharpener for the promotion race.

We've got plenty of history with this lot, being the only fixture in the country to have been played in each of the top five divisions in the country. Here's a frankly mental 7-4 defeat from 1988.

Oh, and if you think Luton's pitch looks like a carpet, that's because it is.

From the blog archive

It's 2010 and our season has started like a rocket. Title favourites, Luton, arrive at the Kassam for a clash of the biggest beasts on the Conference scene. 10,000 fans turn up for a game which isn't all-ticket. The place is mayhem.

"Admist the melee and noise the carrier took centre stage. He raised his right arm and gestured to the gawdy lights of the bazaar of restaurants, cinemas and bowling alleys. The crowd were still." 

Read on.

Weekly wrap: Crawley, Brentford and The Woodmans

Crawley wrap - Oxford United 1 Crawley Town 1

Never judge anything from a single result a trend is always a more effective measure of where things are at. For all the changes and improvements that have been made off the field over the summer, the draw with Crawley gave the clearest indication that we continue to evolve on it. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; we’re too obsessed in football with the power of genius and passion to recognise that success comes from funding and its consistent application in the right processes. While it is possible to jump-start a revival, the effort required to do that is formidable and potentially destructive. If something feels too good to be true, it frequently is. So moderate progression is OK.

This is something to worry about and yet not worry about at the same time. While the overall performance is broadly in the same place as where we left things at the end of last season, the result puts us somewhere between a solid, if unremarkable start and two points dropped. It is only the first game, after all. But, at the same time, we’re a club with a brittle ego and you might reasonably question how long Oxford fans will continue to believe that the summer was anything other than a publicity stunt if results, and the promised revival, come too slowly. If we do have ambitions to win promotion, and even the title, then we should expect to beat a team like Crawley at home.

Brentford wrap - Brentford 0 Oxford United 4

The first round of the League Cup is a bit like the aftermath of a bomb blast; after it happens; it’s difficult to work out whether you’re dead or alive. Two games into the season gives you a sequence, of sorts, on which to judge yourself. Two poor results and you’re tanking, two good results and you’re on a charge. And then there’s all the grey space in between. You really have no idea whether your opening league game is against a title contender or a relegation certainty. Your League Cup fixture adds to that mix with the uncertainty that your opposition is even trying.

Brentford are the hipsters choice now that Bournemouth have sold out and gone into the big time. On one hand they’re the epitome of the moneyball culture in which data is sexual chocolate, but, look at them another way and they’re another rich person’s plaything that is destined to implode spectacularly. This is the club whose MASSIVE DATA SET calculated that their manager was no good when they were sitting in the play-offs last season.

So, did we beat a prospective Premier League club or one that’ll be rattling a collection tin when they’re fighting for survival in a few years time? Who knows, but I find their decision to play a weakened team utterly detestable. When it comes to strength in depth, they’re clearly paper thin so what did they achieve? A clear run at the Championship title? If that is their genuine ambition and this was part of that process, then they’re effectively throwing the game, which is fraud. Or is it just that this is what their algorithms tell them this is what proper modern football clubs do, even if they have no idea why? In reality, I reckon they’ve ultimately come out of it devalued and humiliated.

None the less, credit where it’s due; to come out and demolish a Championship team like we did harms us in no way at all. What it actually means in the context of our season, I haven’t a clue… and neither do you.

Any other business

In goal for Crawley on Saturday was Freddie Woodman, son of former United ‘keeper Andy. Such was Ian Atkins’ devotion to the long ball, it could be argued that Woodman was also one of the greatest our playmakers of the modern era. Significantly, Woodmans senior and junior became by my reckoning, the first father and son duo to have played at the Kassam. Rather chillingly, this makes the Kassam a stadium that has spanned the footballing generations.

We haven’t won at home on the first day of the season since THAT win against York in 2009. The Crawley game had similar hallmarks in that it should have underlined a hectic and positive closed season, catapulting us into the campaign with vigour. Of course, it ultimately did none of those things. I missed that game against York meaning the last opening day win I saw was against Halifax in our first Conference game. This was a remarkable game for two reasons - the first was the Chris Wilder was in the opposition dugout. The second was that the game was sealed by an Andy Burgess wonder-strike, that’s when we thought Burgess was the non-league Lionel Messi.

I followed the first two games of the season on Twitter through a ropey 3G connection while on holiday. I’ve always liked the romantic idea of being an ex-pat fan; following from distant lands, treating every visit to the Kassam as a visit to Mecca and wearing your replica shirt as a counter-cultural statement in a sea of whatever the locals are into (in my holiday’s case, Marseille or Paris Saint Germain). In reality, from this limited experience, there’s just an overwhelming sense of distant despair as the Twitter feed clicks through the 90 minutes.  Either the helplessness of a result going sour or the sense of loss from missing out on a spectacular win. On balance, I think I prefer the communal despair of actually being there.

Season preview: And now... The Football

Amidst a blizzard of announcements, improvements and launches, Mark Ashton’s assertion that he was creating an ‘no-excuse environment’ at Oxford United was a little lost in the noise. This is classic Ashton management-speak but for me it is slightly different to talking about 'DNAs' and getting unknown executives to write options papers about smoking around the ground; this time it means something.

Management is the art of removing excuses for failure. The job is to create the environment – the objectives, the funding and the autonomy that allows individuals to succeed in what they do. If you tell a team to go on the attack when 1-0 up with five minutes to go, there is a ready-made excuse for when you’re caught on the break. If you have a bad pitch, there’s an excuse for not passing the ball properly. If you remove that and assume everyone does their job properly, success should be assured.

Michael Appleton has been given the funding for players, a pitch to play on and an infrastructure to support him. Tickets have been reduced and are easier than ever to buy. The excuses for failure from a fan, player and management perspective are being systematically removed.

This is all good stuff; great stuff even. I wouldn’t say we were in our best pre-season shape since coming back to the Football League – the year we signed Peter Leven, Michael Duberry and Andy Whing has to be up there; but we’re close. Now, it’s time to deliver.

The bookies are convinced; in some quarters we’re favourites for the title. But, then again, Portsmouth are also up there despite a woeful couple of seasons and little evidence that they have yet to recover from the shock of the last few years.

We shouldn’t get too carried away with this; this is part guesswork and part maths – larger clubs will tend to attract more interest and bookies will reduce their price to encourage a wider range of bets to reduce risk. Once the Oxford bandwagon started – particularly with a lot of high profile early signings - the bets were likely to come in forcing the odds to shorten. The bookies are frequently viewed as great soothsayers and very much 'in the know', but their businesses are built on more than the football equivalent of water divining.

Pre-season is supposed to give some indication; we’ve had a good pre-season, but the benchmark – that is who we’ve played and the results we've gained – is a difficult gauge. We comfortably beat Eastleigh, a decent Conference team who you might expect to be upping their game when playing a league team. We drew with and outplayed Coventry, a team above us, but nothing like the force their name might suggest. For all we know we could have been playing teams destined for relegation, who knows?

And then there are the subjective assessments – what does the squad look like? I don’t think we’ve lost anyone last season that we wouldn’t want to lose. Ryan Clarke, yes, but he has been replaced and Andy Whing, although by everyone's admission, that would be more the Andy Whing of 2-3 years ago.

Sercombe, Roofe, Slocombe and Taylor have come in with solid pedigree, and join what was the best of last year's squad. There’s no doubt, in my mind, on average we have better players than we did at this time last year.

But, will they gel and are there enough of them? Those are big unknowns. My gut feeling is that we’re lacking numbers; although I couldn’t tell you where – midfield probably – I can name our strongest back five, and a number of capable combinations up front. Could I say with confidence that we have a capable midfield with options? I can’t name it, so no.

The gelling has to come from Michael Appleton and he remains the biggest unknown of the lot. Clearly a lot of people believe in him, although the evidence is heavily stacked against him, not just at Oxford, but everywhere he's been. A theoretician and a student of the game, yes. But does that always win games? Evidently, no. I’ve said before that we’ve no choice but to back him, but I’m not convinced, yet, that he’ll deliver what we want.

And what do we want? It has to be promotion – via the play-offs or automatically; there’s just no point in putting all this effort in and going for a marginal improvement on last year. We effectively lost a year last season; it’s 5 years since we returned to League 2 and 14 since we were last in League 1. There’s a point where we have to make the breakthrough. Under Ian Lenagan, we were more cautious and long term incremental growth seemed a reasonable, if unremarkable, ambition. But this is a different strategy – it’s aggressive and fast moving. I’ve said before, if you come in aggressively, you’ve got to succeed aggressively. Being charitable, we can write last year off as transitional; this year, there are no excuses.

Shirt changed

Football fans seem to suffer from acute attention deficit disorder; during the season each Saturday, regardless of previous results, fans wake up ‘buzzing’ for the day ahead. You can be 10 points adrift at the bottom of the table without a win in 15 games, but it’s Saturday and Saturday is FOOTBALL DAY.

During the close season, there’s a well-rehearsed series of close season Christmases - fixture launch day, first pre-season friendly day, new signing day. Each is greeted with the same euphoric sense of orgasmic pleasure as the last. Last week we had KIT LAUNCH DAY!

It wasn’t always like this; in days gone by kits broadly stayed the same from one year to the next. A change of manufacturer might result in a different collar, or a switch from a round neck to a v-neck. There wasn’t a culture of fans wearing shirts and clubs couldn’t see the money making opportunities that could come from changing.

Then, in the early 70s, things started to change; manufacturers started to recognise the benefit of advertising themselves through their designs; none more so than Adidas with their iconic three stripes. In the mid-80s things shifted again; I guess it was a breakthrough in technology. Kit designs got more elaborate and intricate. Oxford’s kit, previously a plain yellow with an Adidas stripe, switched manufacturer and gained pin-stripes. You could buy copies in the club shop. Over the next 30 years, kits changed with increasing frequency; first it alternated annually between changes to the home shirt, then the away shirt, and then, eventually, every season both home and away shirts were changed.

We now comply with this custom, we look forward to it, even though it’s a tax on our loyalty. We are expected to buy it, year in, year out. We don’t change our kit because it doesn’t work, it’s because there’s something in our brain which creates an anxiety that challenges our perceptions of loyalty by not being up to date. It's a bit like that bloke you occasionally sit next to who asks whether Alfie Potter or Joey Beauchamp is still playing for us. He's not a proper fan. For some it’s exploitative, for others, like me, we are knowingly exploited, and some resist the whole charade as the scam it is.

This year’s kit has been launched and, well, it’s OK. Truth is, I never really liked the original; we were promoted in 1984 and 1985 in bright yellow and royal blue, with a pinstripe; Division 1 saw a shift to yellow and navy, the darker blue which we’ve become accustomed to is a relatively recent change. The yellow itself was washed out and it had this shadow hoop effect with shiny bits. It was far from an aesthetic classic and just seemed to be a product of the death throes of a golden age of kit innovation. The kit after that - launched in 1987 - was a misfortunate attempt at multi-toned yellow and white stripes, years before Newcastle were ridiculed for it.

It has, of course, acquired legendary status due to the Milk Cup win in 1986, but as a classic design, it was nothing special. The 2015/16 reboot is completely logical in a season that celebrates the 30th anniversary of the Milk Cup win it’s good to see the club trying to capitalise on that. In the past these anniversary celebrations have been surprisingly muted given that there’s much commercial capital to be made from it.

The club are manufacturing their own this year, not quite back to the heady days of Manor Leisure, but a step in that direction. It’s only recently that I realised that kits were typically blank templates which were used by teams all over the world. I thought it was all tailored to us alone. But, there’s something about not having a manufacturer’s logo on which cheapens the design - that’s probably what hundreds of billions of dollars of advertising spend does distorting you into thinking a logo is a, probably fictitious, assurance of quality.

It’s also an excellent move from the club - although I imagine the process of manufacturing your own kit is a grand pain in the backside. In recent years the templates we’ve adopted can range from £10-£15 without a badge, presumably less for bulk. But that includes the manufacturer and distributor costs and profit; buying straight from the factory must push the unit price down considerably. When you’re retailing at £40, that’s a lot of profit.

In 1986, the kit was made by Umbro; a switch from Spall Sports, the Cabrini, Carlotti or Avec of the 80s. Umbro made the England and Scotland kit, at the time. They were a proper, grown up kit maker, with a proper heritage. It seemed like a genuine graduation into the big time. Not carrying a manufacturer feels like a step down; it looks like one of those not-quite-replica vintage kits that clubs now sell. In fact, we’ve been selling one of those for 1986 for the last three years - if this does become a classic, goodness knows what the not-quite-replica version will look like in 2020.

I suppose part of me laments the lack of visceral excitement of a genuinely new and exciting design; something that looks like it’s ours, and at the same time, not like ours. I’m still a sucker for the 2010/11 striped number, an update of 1975, a counter cultural classic, even though most seemed to dislike it. But most kits before and since are little more than a rearrangement of navy panelling and piping on a yellow fabric. Admittedly it's not a broad canvas to work from; maybe we should give up trying to innovate something so limited.

Ultimately, the kit doesn’t define the year, the year defines the kit. The 1986 ‘classic’ is a classic because of Wembley, as is the 2010s vintage. So, the kit is fine, it’s not a problem, it doesn’t do much for me, but if we did get promoted, then that will probably change.

Austrian epiphany?

In 701bc, Sennacherib, King of Assyria, laid siege to the city of Jerusalem. During one night, with the city on the verge of collapse, the angel of YHWM descended and brought death to 185,000 Assyrian soldiers saving the city.

Historian William Hardy McNeill presents the theory that the soldiers were killed by an outbreak of cholera rather than divinity. However, with no knowledge of water borne diseases, the story of the angel endured giving credibility and impetus to the emerging movement of Judaism - an idea that promoted 'one god'; something shared by all dominant religions today.

In 1989, the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan were fighting against the invading Soviet army. Back home the Soviet Union was buckling under economic pressure; the great state collapsed and the Soviets withdrew heralding an apparently divine victory for the resistance force. The Mujaheddin, and Osama bin Laden among them, saw this as God's will, which acted as a catalyst for them to focus on a much greater goal; the battle to create Ummah - an Islamic world.

In 2015, 200 Oxford United fans travelled to Austria to watch a meaningless friendly against Wiener Neustadt. It was, in essence, an excuse for a holiday, but it seemed to turn into something else. The game couldn't have been less meaningless, ending 0-0, but, as the Oxford Mail reported, the fans became the story and, as a result, they seem to have returned with a much greater sense of purpose.

The experience seemed to have many of the characteristics of a religious epiphany. It happened to people who already believed in something, but they had a deeper experience of that 'thing' which was grounded in something real. In addition, there were a series of contributing factors that converged to make it happen.

The internet played an important role; so much of it was reported in real time through social media. Many of those who attended are prominent on Twitter; they knew each other, but at the same time didn't. I knew them, although I've met hardly any; but for 48 hours the faces in the photos on Twitter were more familiar than my real friends' timelines on Facebook.

It helped that Austria was near enough for people to attend, but far enough away to ensure that they didn't dissipate immediately after the game. It meant that people stayed together; the result was that the trip scrubbed the lines between fans, players and owners and created a shared narrative amongst a group of people who are frequently seen as being on different sides of an equation. Was it the birth of something wholly new, deeper and more significant?

We now have a group of people who can tell the story of Wiener Neustadt, something that can, and will, evolve into folklore and legend. Importantly, these are people who are influential and credible amongst an important part of the Oxford United community; the people frequently overlooked - not the zealots or the kids, but the moderates. If you're trying to make a change, you do very well to engage the middle ground - that's where most people exist.

I don't think in 2000 years time we'll all be worshipping at the alter of Danny Hylton; although if I'm ever in the area, I will pay a deferential visit to Clumsy's, but I do think the story of Wiener Neustadt will drive a sense of purpose and goodwill into the new season. If that brings success on the pitch, then it could snowball from there. In that sense, what was a meaningless friendly becomes very important. All we need now is the football.

Ryan Clarke passes into legend

And then there was one.

Every great team has a great spine; Whitehead, Elliot and Gilchrist, Smith and Grey, Moody. Judge, Shotton and Briggs, Houghton and Hebberd, Aldridge. You can add to that Clarke, Creighton and Wright, Bulman and Murray, Constable.

Every great team must, at some point, be dismantled. With the announcement of Ryan Clarke’s departure, the remains of the 2010 promotion team is down to one. It was inevitable, of course; one day Constable was always going to go, Potter was always going to go, even Rhys Day was going to go.

There’s something brutal about replacing an established keeper. In any other position, if someone gets signed then it’s, at worst, a battle for that position. When it’s a goalkeeper, particularly in the lower leagues, most clubs go with an established number one and a young back up. If you’re the established number one and another one gets signed, then the writing is emphatically on the wall.

And that’s particularly rough on a player as loved as Clarke. In reality, it’s fairly easy to be a much loved keeper. You do spend half of every game hanging out with the home fans, you're bound to build some kind of relationship. Plus, I maintain that fans are generally clueless about what makes a good keeper, so basically if you catch a ball or two and dive a couple of times you're quite a long way to becoming a legend.

But, Clarke stands out. In an ideal world, I was hoping he would never leave. Maybe I hoped he would become part of some gargantuan backroom staff, a stockpile of legends who could be found kicking balls at Max Crocombe and being distracted by the half-time scores every Saturday.

Sadly no, all these things come to an end eventually. Clarke’s signing was, in itself, a brave one from Chris Wilder. Billy Turley was himself a capable and much loved keeper. Clarke was part of a very deliberate move to change the direction of the club. No longer would we dwell sentimentally on the past - Turley being one of a number of players who said they had unfinished business with the club and wanted to right a wrong. The reality was that they never did; they toiled away achieving less and less each season. They'd had their chance and it was time to move on.

Clarke, with Creighton and Luke Foster, and then Jake Wright, set out their stall as a dominant force in the Conference. Although he had a fine season, ironically, the lasting memory of his time in an Oxford shirt was him throwing the ball into his own net against York in the play-off final. He also saved us at least once during that game and many times before that, but I always wondered whether his moment of madness discouraged other teams from taking a closer look.

Whatever it was, it was to our advantage. Where others in the promotion team looked far less comfortable in League 2 than they had in the previous season, Clarke looked more than comfortable at that level and looked like he could play at least a level above.

Of course, his abilities were much more on show in League 2 and he saved us countless times, often breathtakingly. For three years, at least, he was consistently the best player in the team; adding penalty saving to his many talents. This was all pretty remarkable from a player who had been in a team relegated to the Conference North before coming to the Kassam. That turnaround was a credit to both Clarke himself and the mentoring he got from Alan Hodgkinson.

Soppy though it sounds, I was always reassured by Clarke’s presence, like I was when James Constable was around. During his periodic injuries, when we’d bring in a loanee who looked like Joe Hart and played like Joe Pasquale, it didn’t feel like our club, like when you buy a pair of shoes and for a while they feel like they’re wearing you. It was all wrong.

Last season, there was no doubt Clarke was a bit more flat-footed than he had been, although we conceded less goals than the year before, the second best since returning to the league in 2010. Injuries may have been a factor, and age, with Clarke clicking over to 33 in April, it was right to ask some tough questions as to whether he would re-discover his sparkle. Sam Slocombe's arrival was the beginning of the end.

Clarke's move to Northampton is, to some extent, obvious. If there’s something that characterises a Wilder player, it’s that they are good dependable pros, and Clarke is certainly one of those. The only surprise, I suppose, is that it’s taken Wilder this long to try to fish him out from his old club. Clarke wants to play; it’s easy to assume that he'll spend a couple of years with the Cobblers and then be satisfied picking up contracts as a back up keeper before retiring. But not now, the indignity of seeing Clarke on the Oxford bench wasn't going to do anyone any good.

So, where does Clark sit in the pantheon of Oxford United goalkeeping greats? It’s difficult to compare different ‘keepers playing at different levels at different times. Time will tell ultimately; legends often mature as time passes. Alan Judge may have been the keeper who played on our greatest day, but I was always more of a Steve Hardwick fan back then. I still, just about, think Phil Whitehead ranks as my favourite keeper of all time. But Clarke is not far behind.

The unforgivable Welsh

To most Oxford fans, the announcement that London Welsh would be packing their leeks and heading back to London was treated in the same way that Channel Islanders probably celebrated driving the Nazis out of Jersey in 1945.

To a tiny minority, there was bemusement at the level of vitriol, particularly amongst Welsh fans. So why were Oxford fans so vehemently against the Exiles?

If it’s not to state too obvious a point, Oxford is neither Wales or London, or indeed any intersection between the two. Club rugby hasn’t always been like it is today; just a couple of decades ago all rugby union was proudly amateur, rugby was what you played to let off steam from a working week. Even at the very top level, internationals would play in front of thousands in the, then, Five Nations, before returning to work as sheep farmers, RAF pilots and lawyers. Clubs, therefore, were clubs in the truest sense of the word. They represented the people within them rather than anything more broad than that. So, London Welsh was, in simple terms, for Welsh people in London. Club rugby was a very parochial affair.

Then Premier League football came along an invented a new way of making obscene amounts of money from sport through subscription TV. Everyone jumped on the bandwagon; products got polished up, competitions were invented and players professionalised as competition intensified. It happened in cricket, both codes of rugby, hockey, netball, even darts was given a make-over.

What football has that other sports tend not to have, is firstly, a huge audience, but more importantly, it already had the infrastructure already in place; the competitions had a hundred years and more of prestige, clubs represented not just those within the club, but cities, religions, class groups. People moved around the country, but were still defined by their football club.

In football location, history, fan loyalty are all important factors in defining that club. That doesn't seem so important in other sports in the new era. So, London Welsh were a club for Welsh people in London, but someone thought abandoning that core value and setting up in Oxford was OK. Welsh aren’t the only ones; Wasps are in Coventry, London Irish in Reading, Saracens were in Watford. It wasn’t everywhere; Bath, Leicester and Gloucester all retain strong geographical identities; but frequently rugby - or maybe specifically the owners just seemed to treat these clubs as ‘brands’ they could move around to wherever they thought they could make the most money.

And that idea; abandoning your history, your fanbase to suit your ‘business model’ is a grotesque idea to any fan of a football club. You only have to see the vitriol aimed at MK Dons to see that. It strikes right at the heart of being a fan. To an Oxford fan, the idea of walking away from your own people is an intolerable treachery and that’s what it appears London Welsh did. It’s like the perverse rules you hear about in prisons; where everyone has killed someone, but the one that killed a child; well, in a sea of unforgivable wrongness, this is somehow more unforgivably wrong.

Now, we probably shouldn’t be too smug about this. Firstly, football is unusual in being so loyal to its location, most sports represent small groups of people, some, like cycling, represent almost nothing at all apart from the whims of millionaires and sponsors. And a recent report suggested that newer fans prefer football as events - big team playing other big teams rather than your team taking on the world. Club loyalty is on the slide; in 20 years clubs may move around seeking the best demographic for their brand. It happens in American Football.

The point stands, however, basically London Welsh was never going to work with Oxford United because it committed the ultimate sin by simply by making the move.

Judging another club by football’s standards is a bit arrogant; it assumes football is right. From my perspective, although the arrangement with Welsh was uncomfortable, it was also largely irrelevant. Apart from in one way; the pitch. Undoubtedly the pitch impacted our results. Chris Wilder gained a reputation for tedious football when he had to focus on pragmatic rather than attractive football, Alfie Potter’s form collapsed in the bog Michael Appleton didn’t seem to learn that his principles were an irrelevance when the ball doesn’t roll true.

Last season was the worst I can remember in terms of entertainment and a lot of that was down to the pitch; it couldn’t cope with overuse. The patches of mud and bog were synonymous with rugby, which is concentrates around certain areas. But, in a sense, aside from moving the club to capitalise on the money available to them, this particular aspect wasn’t Welsh’s fault. They needed a facility, Kassam had one and rented it out even though it wasn't fit for purpose. Should we be surprised from a slum landlord? Perhaps not.

So in a sense, this isn’t London Welsh’s fault - insomuch it's not the fault of their fans - it's the fault of their hapless owners who sold the club’s soul in order to move, and Kassam’s poor service to his tenants. Now they’ve gone I hope they can return to what they originally were, serving Welsh exiles in London. I hope they thrive doing that, it's a very noble cause, but also, I hope they learn never to do it again.

Close season round up - part 1 - on the field

I don't really like the summer. I don't relish the prospect of having to expose flesh. I don't like the way the world slows down and cricket becomes the epicentre of excitement. I like the safety of layers of clothes, I like the tetchy-ness of the cold; the quickened pace to get everything done before the dark. Summer, for me, is really just preparation for winter. It is the close season.

The first month of the summer has been more exciting than the season itself. The euphemistically termed ‘retained list’ was released, which could just as easily be the redundancy list. That’s what it is. No major shocks there, I don’t think. There rarely are with these things as it simply acts as a method to discard the shrapnel of the squad. Those who are getting game-time are usually quite happy to get another couple of years. There’s always one or two that hang in the balance, in this case it appears to be Andy Whing.

I remember once telling someone that Barry Quinn wouldn’t be offered a contract in the summer and he started treating me like Ewoks treat C3P0. But it stood to reason; Quinn had been out for the season and it was fairly obvious the club wasn’t going to risk the guarantee of a couple more years. Same with Whing, he knows, we know, the club knows that he probably hasn’t got much left in the tank. I hope the club can find him something.

Wright, I’m pleased about, I think he gets a bad rap. He broods, but commands the respect of the squad. Just don’t ask him to play like Johan Cruyff as Appleton tried to do earlier in the season. Rose's retention I’m less convinced about; his late season form was essential for our surge to safety, but it was out of character with the rest of his time at the club.

Then, unexpectedly, Kemar Roofe signs on a three year deal. I say unexpectedly, because I was expecting one of those long fruitless slogs, excuses about him being on holiday, or in the toilet, or on his way to sign before appearing in a Chesterfield shirt or some such. Mark Watson did it, Matt Green did it, surely Kemar Roofe was going to do it. But no, Michael Appleton wanted his business done early and that’s exactly what he’s done.

Roofe’s signature means we already have an interesting mix of strikers for next year; Roofe himself is the creative type, Hoban a battering ram who, I hope, will benefit from a proper pre-season. Hylton will let no-one down with his effort (although, as much as he was obviously the only choice as player of the season, it will be interesting to see whether he replicates his goalscoring next season. Goals haven’t been his strong point previously, last season's total was a quarter of his entire decade long career haul). Finally we’ve got a goal poacher in James Roberts. As a mix of strikers, that’s as good as you can get in this division. Men for all seasons.

The signing of Ryan Taylor, then, was a bit of a surprise. In some ways, he is reminder of the risk of getting carried away with all of this. On one hand, he scored 10 goals last year, which is a respectable return at this level and would have proved handy had they been for us. He’s also a strong target man, which is often useful at this level.

However, on the other hand, I know about him because he looks like Dave Kitson. And he used to play for Portsmouth, who look like a Premier League team, when in reality, they are still wrestling the failures of their past, like everyone languishing in these pits of hell.

In other words, it’s a signing that looks like Dave Kitson from the Premier League, but is, in fact Ryan Taylor from League 2. A rough facsimile of something far better. That’s not to say that Taylor isn’t welcome or can be a success, but it’s easy to get carried away with how things immediately appear.

Of course, one of the challenges is getting the ball to these players in the first place, so the signing of Liam Sercombe seems like a solid choice. I don't know much about him, but as a product of Paul Tisdale, he's been well schooled and he's knows how to get out of this league; which is, let's face it, what it's all about.

Time to back Appleton (if we have the choice)

I was standing in my local Costa on Friday picking up a coffee and who should be standing in front of me? Only Michael Appleton. It was suggested that I should have said hello, which is not really something I’ve ever done to a stranger in the Costa queue before. Plus, I’ve met a handful of professional footballers in the past and have decided I like them like I like my women - distant and in caricature.

The way I see it, we only have a certain capacity to know and understand people. A handful become friends because we know enough about them to enhance their strengths and suppress their weaknesses. Everyone else is distilled into a relatively narrow profile out of convenience - there are bad people, good people, clever people and idiots. And in almost every case, they are far more complex and interesting, and probably well intentioned, we just don't have time to get our heads around their nuances.

So my general position with regards to Michael Appleton is that he has made his position as Oxford manager almost untenable, and at times completely untenable, this season. But, that’s not to say I don’t warm to him when I hear him on the radio, or that he’s not a good coach (which is different to being a good manager), or that he could turn it around. And, being in the presence of a man ordering a tea, croissant and bottle of water on a Friday morning, like a normal human being, does make me feel a bit guilty about having doubts and dark thoughts about him as a football manager.

So, perhaps its time to be more reflective. The season is over, and we can finally take stock. Improbably, we ended up just one point behind our total from last year, although we’ve dropped five places in the process. Relegation, which sat like a shadow for large chunks of the season, ended up a gaping 20 points away. It’s not been great, but it’s not apocalyptic either. How odd.

Our late season surge helped, of course, we’re 5th in the form table over the last six games, with only the top 3 and Stevenage (who finished 6th) playing better. This has lightened the mood amongst Oxford fans, and it’s easy to assume that we’ve turned the corner. We are eternal optimists when it comes to turning corners. We have to be. I understand the feeling because, as I stood in the queue in Costa, I didn’t want Appleton to choke on his pastry; that's a change of mood for me.

But, if we’ve turned the corner, then it’s only to the point of where we ended last season; the path to real success is remains uncertain. Is our recent form due to a quirk of having stumbled across enough players with enough form to dig us out of the hole we were in? Roofe was the catalyst to our revival, and there’s little guarantee he, or someone like him, will be back. Danny Rose has been a central character demonstrating a form that he’s barely shown in his previous stints at the club.

It's not unreasonable to look at our form and suggest we're in the ascendency, but then look back to 2007 when, after some mediocre results, Darren Patterson suddenly hit a patch of 5 wins on the trot to close the season with fans expecting promotion 12 months later. We thought that was a turned corner, but, we returned for the new season and to the moderate form of before. It is still the most likely scenario now; that our form next season will be no better than this season. There's nothing apart from blind optimism that contradicts that. Blind optimism has it's place; it sells season tickets, for example.

Bluntly, it has taken Michael Appleton 43 players to find 16 or 17 that can perform anywhere near the level we need, and for a period of 10-15 games. That’s a very low hit rate for a comparatively short period of time. He will argue mitigating circumstances, and he may be right, but we need that player conversion rate to be much better and for the form to be sustained for much longer. No manager is successful with every signing, but he needs to be somewhere around, perhaps, 30-35 players to sustain a successful squad of 25. Whether he can do that or not, we simply don’t know, we just hope.

Which is the reason why, if we were going to get rid of Appleton, it should have been done a long time ago. There have been countless opportunities. My personal low was our capitulation against Southend. Others cite the men versus boys encounters with Shrewsbury, and most recently the abject defeat to Hartlepool when things looked really bleak. Even our penultimate home game against Northampton was a terrible display. I would have had no hesitation in supporting his removal at any of those points and probably more. At least that would have given a new man the opportunity to assess what he had at his disposal and plan for the future.

However, if they were to do it now, then we are in no better position than we were last season with a new manager coming in to a squad he has little knowledge of and even less opportunity to assess. It would mean that, once again, we'd be sorting the squad out while the season was already underway, and probably losing ground in the process.

But, as much as our recent form has pacified many of the masses, there is no doubt the risk of failure next season remains high. But, it is no higher than bringing in a new man and starting again, again.

So, we might as well back Appleton to turn it round.If that sounds grudging, it is; it's been a poor season. But I don't dislike him to the point of wanting to get rid of him as a punishment. That's not the point of changing manager.

He needs a good summer, and it sounds like the club intend to give him that, and he needs a good start next season. Any excuses of building for the future or operating in a difficult environment won't hold water if we find ourselves sitting in mid-table or lower come September.

Show me the way to go home

Saturday was like a letter of reconciliation between a bickering couple deciding that it was better to agree to disagree in an attempt to try to move on.

Both sides - team and fans - were well intentioned even if they sometimes struggled to strike the right tone. The team performed better, really well, even, with a display as satisfying as any at home this season. We, in turn, leapt to our feet in a series of generally undeserved ovations every time there was an opportunity. It seemed out of keeping with what had gone before, but there was a general feeling that it had been tough for everyone and that there was still something in the relationship to fight for.

Just before the end we were asked - told - to stay in our seats so the players could complete their lap of honour. This was the equivalent of having make-up sex, which the magazines insist is the best way to end an argument even though its more likely to leave you feeling slightly used and degraded as you churn over in your head unresolved issues and things that still need to be said. In the end, most feigned a headache or tiredness and sloped off early, leaving the gratuitous love-in to those masochistic enough to go to Newport next week.

The atmosphere, as games like this always are, was of like a coach returning from a stag do. Some nursed the broken bones, ripped clothes and blackened eyes of the night, a handful sang gustily as though it were still peak time. The majority snoozed through the entire thing just longing for the end.

The post-game post-mortem was all about the ‘five or six’ players we needed to mount a challenge next year. It’s always ‘five or six’ a number large enough to show a degree of displeasure, but small enough not to appear too scathing. If challenged to venture where those changes are needed, it’s usually ‘a defender, someone in midfield and a striker’; a message to ‘just change stuff’ without getting too personal.

The assumption is that the very best players will stay but, as Jerome Sale said, it’s all very well saying that Kemar Roofe should be signed, but there are 70 odd teams between West Brom and Oxford; it's quite conceivable that at least one offering more money or better prospects or both, will come in for him.

We're creeping towards a point where the season might actually look, on the surface, respectable. But, perhaps a few weeks of release from the relentlessness of the last 10 months and the anesthetic of an end-of-season win will give a different perspective. There's still work to be done.