FAN’S VIEW 22/23 – No.14: WYCOMBE AT HOME

Papa John’s

Interest still very little. Checked score early on: 1-0 up. Turned radio on with a few minutes to go and from the description of the way the Chelsea kids were playing knew we were losing. Hate the competition but still hate losing any “competitive” game of football. Losing to U21s, it’s embarrassing. Why can’t we keep ****ing clean sheets?

Stats and facts (before Saturday)

Neither we nor our opponents have scored more than two goals in any of the ten league games we’ve played so far.

In the league we’ve only kept one clean sheet this season. Only Forest Green Rovers, who have not kept any, are worse.

MK Dons and Burton have failed to score in 50% of the games they’ve played and Derby and Lincoln in 40%. Bottom club Morecambe have not found the back of the net in five of their 11 games. Bolton and Cheltenham are not much better having drawn blanks in four from their 11. So, plenty of teams have stopped this lot scoring but what do they have in common? Yes, you’ve got it. All have scored against us.

Our opponents

In February 2020 WWFC were taken over by American businessman Rob Couhig who via his company Feliciana EFL Ltd purchased a 75% stake from the Wycombe Wanderers Trust who retained the remaining 25% of the shares.

Couhig became chairman and chief executive and his wife Missy and nephew also joined the board.

A year earlier it was thought that he was about to be officially announced as the new owner of Yeovil Town FC but he pulled out when the Glovers were relegated to the National League.

Seems that not long after this the Trust contacted Couhig. In principle a Fans Trust running a football club is a pure and honourable way of conducting business but in practice it is a different matter. They just don’t have the financial clout nor likely the expertise to take their club very far and particularly not on a sustainable basis.

By their own admission the Wycombe trust were struggling financially. Previous chairman Trevor Stroud made the following statement: “We thank Rob Couhig for the commitment he has shown to the club ever since accepting our call in June to support the club financially and operationally. Without his contribution at the time, we were facing an extremely precarious position and I don’t believe the club would be in the position it is now had Rob not come forward”.

I believe Feliciana initially invested £2.2m to settle existing debts and made a further £1m available to the club.

I’ve never quite got my head round why American business men want to buy football clubs at this level. The Glazers at Manchester United, yes. I hate what they’ve done but they’ve been able to sweat the asset, take a fortune out in dividends and just pay off the interest on the debt they saddled the club with when they took control. They don’t care that the Red Devils are now a shadow of the team that they were in Alex Ferguson’s heyday. It’s all about money and greed and the system allows this to happen.

But Wycombe Wanderers? It’s hard to tell what Couhig’s net worth is. He has previously owned the New Orleans Zephyrs baseball team which plays at triple-A level. That’s one rung below Major League Baseball.  So not the biggest of hitters. (Pun possibly intended).

Once the takeover was completed he tweeted this: “Completion of our purchase of 75% of the centerpiece of the WorldWide Phenomena: The Wycombe Wanderers Football Club! Actually, its a great day to say “Yeah, I’m a Wanderer ! “ BELIEF !” Perhaps he thinks all English football teams have the same standing provided they are not in the National League.

Their latest accounts “for a small company” tell very little. Even less than ours. To y/e 31/07/21 there is equity of just under £1m on the balance sheet and the change in the profit and loss reserve figure indicates a profit of £3.2m. No idea how that was achieved.

Having beaten us in the 2019/20 play-off final they only spent one season in the Championship but last season amassed 83 points and nearly got back up at the first time of asking. They lost in the play-off final 2-0 to Sunderland.

This season to date they’ve been a tad more dismal than we have. Same points, but played a game more. However, the teams that have been beating them are generally the better ones in L1. They’ve lost their last three. To Derby 2-1, to Sheffield Wednesday 3-1 and Plymouth 1-0.

There will be huge pressure on both sides on Saturday.

Oxford United 0 Wycombe Wanderers 1

Football means so much to so many people. When things are not going well for your team on the pitch it hurts. You get angry. You feel down. But as we know there are times when that is all put into perspective for at least a short space of time. The football becomes irrelevant.

The “medical emergency” which led to the game being held up for 45 minutes began just before we were awarded a penalty. It happened a few rows in front of us in the SSU when it became apparent something was amiss and action was swiftly required. I rarely take my eyes off the play but did here. I looked back at the pitch just as Marcus Brown was going over in the box. I saw the penalty, which wasn’t the best from Cameron Brannagan, well saved as was the follow up from James Henry. Such occurrences always give a great boost to the defending team and for us, a team who are now pretty clueless when it comes to scoring goals, a debilitating effect having spurned a golden opportunity.

However by now it was apparent that the medical situation was indeed a very serious one and it would have been wrong for the game to have continued. I was one of those shouting for the game to be stopped. The speed with which the medical staff and stewards handled the whole affair was exemplary. They were on it so quickly which is absolutely vital with an improvised shield being provided as the medics went about their work. CPR was being given until a defibrillator arrived and did its job. Those fans sat close by naturally moved away and the news they were relaying wasn’t good. To be honest many were fearing the worst so to see / hear that eventually the patient left on a stretcher wearing an oxygen mask was good news of sorts. Like every other person in the ground I can only wish them all the best. As has been pointed out, it is better for someone to have such an episode in an environment where there are medical staff and equipment on hand than in one’s own home.

For me much of what there is in the world today demonstrates that we have learned very little and have gone backwards as a caring society but in some aspects we’ve progressed a really long way.

I couldn’t help thinking back many years to the Beech Road stand at the Manor. I was watching a game there with my wife when someone close by collapsed. My recollection is that it took a while to attract attention. Then only a couple of stewards appeared. There was no great urgency to deal with the situation. The game didn’t stop. They never did back then. Eventually some St Johns ambulance volunteers arrived on the scene. I remember the person who was clearly very unwell being taken out but I don’t think it was on a stretcher although I might be wrong. I know they were taken away in an ambulance. One of the stewards, a lady, was clearly shook up. I saw her the following home game and enquired after the stricken supporter. With a sad face she replied, “They died I’m afraid”. I don’t think there was an announcement but again could be wrong.

The game resumed with 15 minutes on the clock. The disjoint had no impact whatsoever on how the game panned out. Almost everything that we witnessed was a known. The way Wycombe have always played under Gareth Ainsworth and the way we have played this season, collectively and individually. What follows cannot be anything but damning.

You don’t have to believe me when I say I’m always on the lookout for something positive to cling on to, but I am. I refer you to the FV v Charlton. I saw some tiny green shoots there. I saw this game as a harsh frost that killed them off.

What’s gone on and is planned away from the playing side – ownership, chairman, CEO, finance and commercial – is completely at odds with the shambolic state of affairs football wise we’ve witnessed all season. And this of course has to have last season’s falling away tacked on to any assessment. It has been said many a time “yes but Robbo has got credit in the bank, hasn’t he?” My view is that he did have but that is now completely exhausted. I was of the view that this game was his last chance. We failed. He failed. He’s failed this season massively.

I then hear but we always start badly, we’ve been bottom at Christmas and have still made the play-offs. Blah, blah blah. Facts yes, but how about don’t start badly, how about don’t be bottom at bloody Christmas? Perhaps if that had not been the case we would have got promotion by now.

This time we’re losing to some pretty mediocre and poor teams. I think that’s a new one.

There has to be something clearly amiss behind the football scenes.

I’m not going to start complaining about the Wycombe way. Referee Keith Stroud handled the game reasonably well. It’s an absolute given what we’ll get. Our fans know it. Their fans know it. Karl knows it but still seemingly does nothing by way of having a game plan to counter sides Ainsworth puts out. The Wycombe manager never faces a tactical conundrum from us that he needs to overcome to secure the win. I know we have beaten them on occasion but mostly they boss encounters between these two teams. “Oxford get battered everywhere they go” sang the Wycombe fans, not for the first time. And also belted out again: “Oxford United, it’s happened again.”  This angers me but my annoyance is more directed at those responsible for the outcome of these matches than those delivering the words.

As usual I heard the “it wasn’t for lack of effort, the players gave their all”. I have no doubt a 100% was given but that little extra, that 110%, I’m not so sure. I wouldn’t say we ever got bullied out of it but there were a couple of challenges when it seemed to me that they wanted it more. Ainsworth having got them believing more than Robinson had got us believing.

If we had given our all and still came out losing what does that say when we’ve got some players of genuine L1 quality in our ranks? No proper game plan perhaps? I could never quite work out what we were trying to do to win the game. Possibly the players didn’t either.

We had 69% possession and had pressure of sorts but none of it convinced me we were going to get a goal.  Other than the penalty and a very good save from an inventive corner when we looking as likely as at any stage just before half time I can’t recall Max Stryjek having to make much of a save other than one near the end from Matty Taylor low to his right. That was very much a save one would expect a goal-keeper to make. To his right Matty had Tyler Goodrham completely unmarked. A proper pass would have put our youngster in with a much greater likelihood of us actually scoring a goal but that just fits the pattern of what we are doing at the moment. So much wrong.

So there we have it. No goals scored for the fourth time in eleven games. Seven teams have performed worse in this regard but tellingly the two that have scored every time are second (Ipswich) and fourth but with two games in hand (Pompey). We’re averaging just 0.82 goals a game and only bottom club Morecambe are worse. It is totally embarrassing.

We had 29 shots but only five on target. That’s damning. Eighteen of our shots were from outside the box. Very few goals are scored from there. It’s usually giving possession away. That and the number we had blocked, 15, indicate our players are not being coached properly when it comes to creating chances, taking the sensible option and when shooting at goal employing the correct technique. Either that or they are just not bothering to listen to what they are being told. It all appears very moronic to me. We had the usual morons in the crowd regularly shouting shoot when the shooter had about as much chance of hitting the target as Goodrham growing two feet overnight and playing centre-half next game.

Some of Cam’s shooting was atrocious. It was as though he’d never been taught the skill at all. And as for Marcus Browne’s attempt also very late on, words fail me. His first hit and hope was bad enough but when the ball came back to him the way he slashed at it was as bad as you will ever see. Both outside the penalty area of course. We were desperate for an equaliser, although no way would that have appeased me. What was needed was common sense, continued patience and a weighing up of the options of the best route to goal. It was as though he had no ideas and had just given up.

I have loved watching these players and have marvelled over some of the quality they have produced but they are so far from their best at the moment it is frightening.  When a team is not playing well as a unit, individual performances suffer. When individuals are not playing well the team as a whole suffers. It is a vicious downward spiral which can be very difficult to snap out of.

Our back line defensively were pretty decent for the most part of the game but we don’t keep clean sheets. Even Forest Green have managed one now. Once more it took just one goal to beat us. Great header. Clinical finish. Again we were slow in the build-up. Lots of sideways and backwards stuff with Easty way too far out of his goal. It isn’t bringing us success. No footballing centre half as of old and to repeat once more our full-backs are not attacking wing-backs.

In the first half I thought we were woeful down the right. Long got forward a fair bit and didn’t do badly but James Henry went missing. We had no width down that flank.

At half time I heard, “Taylor’s past it and Henry too”.

To be fair to the latter he began to look like one of our better players, if not best as the second half took shape. To me he appeared to be playing wider and getting some decent balls into the box.

Photo, Simon Jaggs

As for MT, I’d been encouraged by his showing at Charlton but he had little influence here. That old, “but nothing is being created for him” does stand up to scrutiny though. I can’t remember an Oxford player once getting to the by-line and pulling the ball back. Again we lacked pace throughout.

Taylor’s partner up front, Kyle Joseph, was another I’d been impressed with at the Valley, but not in this. Back to looking average at best. Again possibly a reflection of the whole uninspiring turgid mess. Browne? Team player or individual? His talents are not being showcased at the moment that’s for sure.

When things are not going well and the football isn’t flowing how about someone getting a head on a free-kick or a corner? Nah, we never looked dangerous from those either. Thing is there were a few signs that if the Wycombe defence had been put under properly considered and targeted pressure they might well have been breached. They weren’t all that at times.

No Jodi Jones. Why? We did get a brief glimpse of Josh Murphy. I am at a loss as to most of what’s happening, or not, at present.

I’m beginning to think the unthinkable. Away games, are they worth going to if there’s no early arrival and the chance for a few beers with my travelling mates and others we nearly always bump into hours before kick-off in decent boozers around the country? I’d already bought my coach ticket for Exeter before this latest bore fest.

We’d arrived early for the OxVox AGM and parked in the car park behind the North stand. Walking back to the car I heard one fan proclaiming: “He’s got to go, end of”. Yes, I think his time is up. I’m not going to turn up to games yelling for his head because that doesn’t do any good but surely we’re at an enough’s enough stage aren’t we? I even asked my son who is very uncritical if he thought Karl should go and he replied quietly “yes”.  All very sad.

We sat in the car waiting for the traffic to clear before leaving. I couldn’t face listening to Radio Oxford so instead opted for the live Premier League match on the radio. My wife though had her head phones on listening to our manager’s comments. She informed us that Karl thought we played well. I’d been worn down, I could hardly manage an expletive. He should be a politician.

As soon as I got through the front door I headed for the strong cider.

Never mind Sam Baldock will be back soon. Tried to close as I often do on a footballing positive but it’s getting increasingly difficult.

Discussion probably along the lines of we aren’t doing too bad back here but what about those b*****s at the other end.  Photo, Simon Jaggs