FAN’S VIEW 22/23 – No.28 – FA CUP ROUND THREE 

OXFORD UNITED 0 ARSENAL 3

Must be a big game, the street sellers have turned up

Given our mediocre league form I’d found it hard to get too excited about the visit of the Gunners to our three sided rented home but with a couple of days to go I began to look forward to it based on the fact you never quite know with football and the last time the best of the best appeared in Oxfordshire we were highly entertained by Pep Guardiola’s men.

It goes without saying that Arsenal are on another planet when it comes to finances, quality of players and size of their fan base. I’ve been mightily impressed with the football they’ve played this season and they’re not top of the Premier League for no reason, five points ahead of Manchester City.  I’ve watched a lot of Premier League games on Sky. Their football, which much of the time has been a mix of one touch stuff along with the dribbling skill of Gabriel Martinelli and the vision of Martin Odegaard along with the second best defensive record in the top flight, has made them genuinely worthy contenders for the title.

How refreshing would that be if they were to win it for the first time in 19 years? That would make them the sixth different Champions in 11 seasons. None of this boring stuff. Celtic or Rangers in Scotland. PSG eight times in the last 10 in France. Bayern clear at the top again in the Bundesliga and likely to make it 11 in a row. In Spain it’s always Real or Barca with the occasional Atletico.

So what were the chances of us beating our visitors from North London? I tried to come up with some logical argument that we were in with a decent shout but couldn’t. We’d not scored in three of our last four games. Only Forest Green have kept fewer clean sheets than us this season – and that’s all in League One. I then got onto the obvious, thinking about the strength of the team Mikel Arteta would put out. With the prestige of winning the Premier League massively outweighing that of becoming FA Cup winners – something they’ve achieved five times since they were last Champions of England – I was telling myself they’ve not got the strength in depth that Manchester City have so the tiniest of glimpses, perhaps.

Then I saw their starting eleven. That very much brought on a wave of hope we don’t get humiliated and can give a good account of ourselves in the circumstances.

In the final reckoning the score line was to be expected and wasn’t an embarrassment but I came away quite disheartened and disappointed on a couple of counts. Firstly the way Arsenal played and secondly the glaringly obvious faults within our team and the way we play.

There’s no denying that the visitors have some marvellous talent and at times in the second half we saw that on display when they ripped us apart and demonstrated that the gulf in quality was huge. Their quickness of movement and the speed with which they closed us down when they decided to do so was something else but seeing them in the flesh over 90 minutes I didn’t warm to them one little bit.

The game had not long been underway when an Arsenal man had deliberately kicked the calves of one of our guys when there was no intention of playing the ball. They had players going down and feigning injury.  Bukayo Saka in particular. They took the piss over the time they took to line up for the re-start after celebrating their goals. They were all slow but the dawdling of Eddie Nketiah took the Premier League arrogance award knowing full well that the referee was “one of their own”.  Just look how they surrounded David Coote.

Coote booked just one player and that was Ciaron Brown – and here it transpires is a whole story of its own to play out whether it be something damaging to our football club and the future career prospects of our number 16 in particular or just a soon to pass storm in the FA Cup. (Think I could write a whole Fan’s View on this but no time to do so).

So that’s the Arsenal players but what about their fans? Like any supporters they get a bit excited when their team scores irrespective of who the opposition are. “You’re only here cos it’s Arsenal” a predictable if somewhat boring chant. Sung by fans all over the country, including ours, but with an obvious name change as appropriate of course. Quite wrong though for most fans supporting Oxford in the sell-out crowd of 11,538. That number was 9,802. For League One games we usually get 7k-8k home supporters so do the maths – and I’ll be at Highbury on Saturday.

I suspect there may be some who will think that because it was Arsenal we were playing against, our weaknesses and most, if not all, of the things we did wrong can be overlooked. I’m not one of them.

Let’s not beat about the bush – we have no forward line. No goal scorer. It’s seriously worrying. Matty Taylor looks finished as a League One striker. Well that’s what it looks like at the moment and none of the fellow supporters I’ve chatted to about this think otherwise. It’s sad but that’s the way it is. His best work is usually defending corners. He gets caught off-side way too often for a man of his experience. He is now giving away foul after foul and is rightly being penalised and seems to have lost pace and sharpness. Most of that was evident in this game.

Our fans now sing “Gatlin O’Donkor” but a lad of such tender years isn’t going to provide a 90 minute solution week after week. Clearly we were unlucky with the injury to Kyle Joseph but it is over 300 days since Sam Baldock pulled on a competitive yellow shirt. We’ve mostly got ourselves into this mess.

Djavan Anderson, some player he is when he goes past an opponent at speed, then another one, then another, but he will eventually lose the ball so pass the bloody thing when there is a colleague free. But no on he goes then …… he loses it. Might look good but doesn’t do the team much good. Same applies whether against a top Premier League outfit or a team at the bottom of L1.

As does this – we’ve got the ball in quite a tight area but again there’s a player free about 30 yards away with an easy pass on. Instead of playing that pass we move the ball into the congestion, manage to keep it, play it around a bit then get it out to the man in that space. Bloody do it first time, don’t waste those few seconds, get things done quicker and more efficiently. And of course the percentage of mistakes that are punished will be higher against better opponents.

Also when there’s a hint of a chance being created it has to be put together with precision. A pass a few feet away from perfection will delay the best angle on goal without an additional touch from the man hoping to get a telling shot away. It’s then gone in a split second. We were in no way precise enough to create anything of meaning.

Going in goal-less at the break was undoubtedly encouraging but with Arsenal having a few more gears to go through there was little point in looking up the route to the Etihad.  I’ll concede we had kept good shape and competed well. I particularly liked a Cameron Brannagan challenge. Full-bloodied would be the best description and in the old days deemed perfect but in these more health and safety conscious times perhaps getting a little close to a line which if crossed would be considered excessive force. After seeing how Arsenal were playing I think he’d decided I’m having none of that, I’ll show them that they’re in a game. That pleased me.

Even though the team normally in red improved dramatically after a half-time rollicking it remained level pegging until the 63^rd minute. Thirteen minutes later it was more than all over.

The first came from a fairly routine free-kick. One that many of a yellow persuasion thought should not have been given. The delivery was good but no-one challenged the scorer. More the sort of goal that you would expect a lower league team to score against one from higher up the pecking order not the other way round.

They were now finding gaps between and through our lines. The solid look we’d had about us had gone. Most of our players were nowhere near theirs when we were out of possession, which was most of the time.

The second goal looked like a training ground move with little effort or thought being required to achieve it. Our captain was playing statues as Eddie Nketiah ran past him before rounding our Eddie, Mr McGinty with ease. I think this move started when we gave the ball away.

For the last goal of the game they went straight through us again as if men against boys. Yes they’re highly skilled and it was an excellent finish but it was as if our resistance had completely disappeared.

It’s a real pity that none of our players could make a name for themselves in this for the right reasons. I wouldn’t say anyone utterly disgraced themselves with their footballing performance but we had a chance of glory and got nowhere near. So far in his career with us I’ve not been a fan of our keeper but wouldn’t blame him for the score-line here. Other than the goals that went past him there was little he had to do in the way of making saves but his general handling looked quite sound.

Perhaps Lewis Bate was our best player. He has after all played some minutes in the Premier League.

Now it’s back to the mundanity of the annual visit to Fleetwood. We’ve got to get our act together pdq. A repeat of last season is needed, not that of the previous five. After our trip to Lancashire its Ipswich at home and as far as I’m concerned we’ve not done anything this season to demonstrate we can beat the best teams in L1. We need points now.

If we do return on Saturday with another win on the board I can safely say that I will have enjoyed that 90 minutes a whole lot more than the one I saw on Monday night.

That said I’m finding the whole thing a bit wearing at the moment with my level of enthusiasm nowhere near what it usually is. That’s evidenced by the fact that these Fan’s Views are now not being published until quite a few days after the event. It’s quite easy to find other things to do than sit in front of a keyboard and bang on about the same old failings.

We recorded the whole match on our Freesat box but thus far, Thursday lunch time, I have not found any motivation to watch it back again. When I do, I’m wondering if perhaps my take on the event with just the real time view to go on, is coloured by my yellow tinted spectacles and grumpy old man mode. Could it be that I’ve been harsh all round and should just be saying as expected we were beaten by a much better team who I should now be wishing all the best for the rest of the season?

Bloody scoreboard. No-one wants that rubbed in their faces. Photo Simon Jaggs