OTHER BITS AND PIECES (Part One)

A bit late but why not? Okay, here goes.

An in and a surprise out

Filip Krastev – is he a creative number 10? A replacement for Ruben Rodrigues only better? I hope so and if so the missing piece to the puzzle. The puzzle being the squad from which Gary Rowett can make his picks, starting XI and subs as and when.

Elliott Moore, a surprise exit

The make up of our squad is very different from that not long back. Krastev is a Bulgarian international. Also in the squad we’ve got two Poles, a Belgian, a Slovenian and a Dutchman. That’s where the recruitment team are largely casting their eyes in the search for the best value for money.

But the main talking point wasn’t this in, it was the out – Elliott Moore leaving by mutual agreement. A huge surprise? Well perhaps not because rumours were swirling about, but a bit of one there’s no denying and of course many rumours are unfounded or even if there is a bit of truth in them the end game doesn’t always come to fruition.

Moore was left out of the squad for the Coventry game. The talk was that he was going out on loan. It was the actual leaving with no other club to go to that was the big shock. No longer being contracted to us though means he can sign for another club even though the transfer window is now shut. Alongside his wife, he’s built an eco-friendly property development business so perhaps he doesn’t think football is for him anymore, or if it is perhaps a level or two below that at which he’s performed over the last few years.

What a servant he’s been to our football club. He’s been with us six years and has clocked up 191 starts in the football league including 29 in the Championship yet is still only 28 years of age. If I’d had to guess, I’d have said a couple of years older. I can also picture him heading in more than 10 league goals from corners and free-kicks but to be fair he was often the one nodding it back across the box for others to attack.

But nothing is forever. Players know that one day they will be wearing a different shirt or no shirt at all. We the fans know that too. Sometimes it hurts deeply when a player is no longer ours, sometimes we’re not unhappy at all to see a departure and at other times we’re sad because we know the game is up, the legs have gone or whatever.

In League 1 our captain was a nailed-on starter, one of the key players in that so important and so often talked about spine. At that level he was my number one centre-half, the first pick in that position but there was a hint of what was to come following our promotion. Ben Nelson on loan and then the signing of Michal Helik in the January window. Now we’ve got Ben Davies and let’s not forget how Ciaron Brown, though currently injured, has got better and better. And Sam Long certainly isn’t getting worse. 

Moore started against Pompey but went off after 66 minutes. I can’t remember if it was tactical or due to injury.  He then came on for 10 minutes at the end of the underwhelming win against Colchester. Next was the full game against Hull then he was an unused sub against Birmingham. The 6-0 battering by Brighton was to prove his last game for us. He had to face the microphones afterwards and did so with dignity.

Again, not involved when we got our first point of the season. Rowett saying that after Brighton “Ells was tight so didn’t feel like he was ready to get himself out there”. Make of that what you will. Then on Monday 1 September came the announcement.

Players in his position are expected to put their bodies on the line and our captain very much did so. Above and beyond the cause? I’d like to think so but I don’t think we can deny that this season he’s been struggling. A lack of pace is going to be exposed more at our current level and there’s a question as to whether injuries have caught up with him even at such an early age.

Good luck with whatever comes next in his career. Thanks so much for the memories. That rearguard action at London Road Peterborough after scoring the goal in the first leg. Then holding the trophy high at Wembley. Elliott might have left the building but he did so with his head held very high indeed.

Nerves went jingle jangle waiting on our new Triangle

It will soon be a month since the Planning Committee meeting at Cherwell District Council approved Oxford United’s application to build on the Triangle. I watched the live stream from start to finish, over four hours in total.

I lost count of the number of times I screamed at the screen “for ****s sake”, “****ing hell” and “you ****ing ******”.  

Fair to say I was on edge.  

I have to say that I wouldn’t want to be a Councillor. Too much hard work if the role is undertaken seriously. So, in a way I’ve got admiration for all of them but why do they do it? Is it with the best of intentions for the wider community? Or is it more about self-serving or just trying to look after a small minority? And how do they vote on anything? Do they vote along party lines? Do they vote just based on their personal views? Or do they take on board what their constituents want? Of course, not all constituents want the same thing. Do they represent the majority or the minority and how do they objectively identify those in each camp along with the indifferent anyway?

Given that the Principal Planning Officer (PPO) had recommended approval I was quite optimistic at the outset but there was a slight caveat based on a previous experience. That was quite a few years back now when I was in attendance and actually had my 5 minutes in front of the microphone. (Call me a nimby if you so desire but our case was logical and strong). Then the Planning Officer in her introduction got a key fact wrong. I thought it all a bit Micky Mouse.

This though was on a different level. The professionalism of Laura Bell (PPO) could not have been higher. She and the other officers there to answer questions from the councillors kept their cool in exemplary fashion.

And a mention of Barry Wood who was in the chair. He controlled it very well.

I understand that there must be proper procedures, objectivity, fairness (whatever that may be) and governance etc. when it comes to a project of this size, yet at times it has just seemed that it was one bit of red tape after another with the end of the road getting further and further away. The saga feels like it has gone on forever.

I live in Bicester. Bicester Village is massive. It just seemed to pop up. It’s open every day of the year except Christmas day. There was absolute traffic chaos on bank holidays in the early days. Obviously not been correctly modelled and challenged. So very different to the Triangle.

Would I want the new ground in my town/village quite close to my property? My answer to this is YES and NO.

Yes, because it would be a dream to be able to walk to home games and have the club I love on my doorstep. But also no because Bicester is about 10 miles distance from Oxford. Not that this has stopped the Tritax Park just off junction 9 of the M40 being “Tritax Park Oxford.” It’s a couple of miles outside Bicester. Siemens are going to have a £250m facility there which will be the UK’s first major producer of the new so-called DryCool technology, which reduces the amount of helium required in an MRI scanner from 1,500 litres to under a single litre. The new facility will be carbon-neutral. Very very laudable and it brings lots of skilled jobs to the area but it looks absolutely massive and there are lots of other units on site too. And that’s without phase two which we’ve been informed will only delay journey times between 1-3 minutes. Every journey, everyday? That would soon add up to a considerable sum in wasted time and traffic pollution in an already polluted area. But hey, this isn’t a football ground we’re talking about here so let’s crack on.

I don’t claim to understand the niceties of the whole process but got quite confused at the start of the meeting. Perhaps it’s my tiny brain being unable to cope.

It began with the PPO reading out something new from Natural England. Doesn’t take much to guess who brought this up. Deadlines don’t seem to mean anything. This was all to do with Stratfield Brake so I didn’t get the relevance. It wasn’t explained to the layman.  

After the PPO had laid it all out there was 25 minutes speaking against the proposal and 5 minutes in support.

Ward members get 10 minutes. Cllr Linda Ward, Green Party (Kidlington East) and member of both Kidlington and Yarnton Parish Councils was first up. “It’s the wrong development in the wrong place.”  “Cinderella’s fairy godmother could not make this shoe fit.” “This emperor has no clothes”.  I wondered if I’d been sucked into the world of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. None of it seemed real.

Next was Cllr Ian Middleton, Green Party (Kidlington East) and a member of both Kidlington and Gosford & Water Eaton Parish Councils. He began by saying he wanted Oxford United to thrive. True colours showed immediately after. He made statements about the future as fact. “There will always be tension between the club and the local community”. Perhaps whilst you’re trying to stir it Mr Middleton. He mentioned up to 43 events per year leading to road closures. Even with the most successful of cup runs in which every round we were drawn at home we wouldn’t get near that. And if anyone thinks the women’s team are going to attract gates big enough to mean closure is necessary, they’re delusional.

He demonstrated a lack of, or feigned lack of, understanding of football finance. He said the club are “mired in debt”.  Of course OUFC are in debt but mired isn’t quite the right description. Probably over 90% of football clubs are in debt but it’s a myth that debt in itself is a bad thing. It’s only so if that debt cannot be financed. Our owners are doing so with no problem and there is no indication that they will not continue to. Why wouldn’t they? They’ve shown utter dedication to the cause in getting us a new home. We’re told they’ve spent £10m already in getting us to this stage. Middleton mentioned them possibly selling the club and then suggested we could stay at the Kassam. Do keep up FFS this has been covered over and over. He then accused the club of ignoring the introduction of Martyn’s law.  This is a law which was given Royal Assent in April but the practical guidelines and regulatory details have not yet been issued so no-one yet knows what is required. This was explained to certain councillors during the meeting time and again but they were either too stupid to understand or just being obstreperous. 

Mr Middleton’s conclusion was that “this application remains unsafe, internally inconsistent, technically deficient and procedurally flawed”.

It was then the turn of the public antis. Five minutes split between Melanie Moorhouse on behalf of Kidlington Parish Council (hadn’t they had enough say by now?) and Adrian Sutton on behalf of Friends of Stratfield Brake.

MM is a Lib Dem representing the Roundham ward. She has “zero confidence” that OUFC would deliver on anything regarding the community benefits promised. Get those bloody blinkers off. The evidence is there already regarding what Oxford United do in the community. Continuing to deliver on this front – and even more so with a new ground – is a win-win. For club and community. Being all in it together will make club and community stronger. But there will always be some miserable dissenters on the sidelines.

Sutton said that the ground should be refused for three reasons. Green belt policy, public safety and ecological harm. My head did some more shaking. Just how many members do FoSB have? How many was he representing?

At last Tim Williams and Roland Francis Clements. No bullshit. No waffle. To the heart of the matter. What Oxford United means to so many people and what it can become and deliver in the future given the chance.

Yes, the Triangle is on Green Belt but exceptional circumstances trump that and this was made clear from the outset.  

I concluded that some of the Councillors probably had not read all the papers for this application. Yes, there’s a lot of pages. Yes, it’s time consuming, but that’s your role. And just before the vote was taken one councillor said “I don’t know what we’re voting for.” In that case you should never be allowed anywhere near a planning committee again, or any other committee where decisions are taken.

Some of the questions asked and points discussed were crazy and nothing to do with the application.

I can’t remember who specifically said what but the following was covered:

Its not safe. It was politely explained to them a football club has to get a safety certificate from the local authority every year and that this is nothing to do with the planning application but they came back to it more than once.

Cllr John Broad thought that permission to build should not be granted until it could be guaranteed that the fire hydrants had sufficient pressure to allow the Fire Service to do their business should there be a fire. Again, I think it was explained more than once that this was Thames Water’s duty to provide the water and had nothing to do with the application.

We had “But what if there’s a delay on the trains and a lot of supporters arrive late? What’s the plan for that?”

We had “What if there’s an emergency and the roads are closed? Emergency vehicles won’t be able to get through”.

We had something like “What happens if someone needs to get from Kidlington to the maternity unit at the JR and the roads are closed?”.

It is impossible to cater for every eventuality was the sensible stock response and it was pointed out, as if it needed to be, that if there was an emergency the police would ensure the emergency vehicles had adequate passage. And do you know what? Football supporters are human beings who live in the real world. A world where you stand aside at the sign of blue flashing lights.

One lady councillor appeared to get very confused about the number of games that would be played each year. I don’t think she understood the concept of cup games.

The football club had worked meticulously to get here. Provided every bit of information asked for time and again as the date of this meeting was put back and back. They couldn’t have done more, they really couldn’t.

But this was no guarantee that the vote would be for approval.

It was proposed by Councillor Dr Kerrie Thornhill (Labour) and seconded by the leader of the Council, Councillor David Hingley, that the application be approved.

It was then proposed by Councillor Dr Isabella Creed (Labour) and seconded by Councillor David Rogers (Conservative) that a recorded vote be taken guaranteeing no hiding places and allowing constituents to know which way their representatives had voted. They’d likely have been able to guess anyway.

This is how it went:

Cllr Rebecca Biegel (Labour) –   For

Cllr Chris Brant (Lib Dem) –   For

Cllr Broad (Independent) – Against

Cllr Phil Chapman (Conservative) – For

Cllr Becky Clarke MBE (Labour) – For

Cllr Creed (Labour) – For

Cllr Ian Harwood (Conservative) – For

Cllr Hingley (Lib Dem) – For 

Cllr Fiona Mawson (Green) – Abstained

Cllr Lesley McLean (Lib Dem) – Abstained

Cllr Dr Chukwudi Okeke (Labour) – For

Cllr Robert Parkinson (Lib Dem) – For

Cllr Chris Pruden (Lib Dem) -For

Cllr David Rogers (Conservative) – For

Cllr Les Sibley (Independent) – For

Cllr Dr Kerrie Thornhill (Labour) – For

Cllr Dorothy Walker (Lib Dem) – Abstained

Cllr Barry Wood (Conservative) – For

It was 7-1 in favour by the time it got to Middleton’s wife Mawson. Presumably knowing for sure which way it was going brought on the abstention instead of another “against”. Same for McClean and Walker.

This will have been noted by many. Do voters have short or long memories?   

Next step is to get approval from the Secretary of State for Housing. That’s Angela Rayner. No, wait a minute, it’s Steve Reed as of 5 September. What in tray is it in? Where is that in tray? Is Reed aware of that in tray? How far down the in tray is it?

Time to stop and get this out there. I’ve got a bit more to say though, hence a possible part 2.