FAN’S VIEW  2025/26 – NORWICH AWAY

There was a time when I and my mates didn’t think twice about driving to an evening fixture and back again after the game even if round trip was 400 miles. As we’ve got older, we’ve found it much harder to face. Last season this fixture was also a midweek affair. Then I opted for the LRC coach. Nightmare. Journey both ways took forever and a day. Only just arrived in time for the game. Not a single pint was had. And we didn’t get back on the road for a long time after the final whistle.

I was having none of that this time. Instead, I got my first ever experience of Airbnb, all booked by a mate. Mightily impressed I was too. Not expensive, all the facilities one could wish for when only staying one night, parking spaces, only about half a mile walk to the ground and with a Good Beer Guide listed pub, the Coach and Horses, just 140 yards away. 

The drive there was a bit eventful, we got rear ended in Milton Keynes. Learnt that Volvo handsomely beats Ford. Volvo just a little mark. Ford, smashed head-light, twisted bonnet, and bumper partially hanging off. I wasn’t behind the wheel.

We were in the Coach and Horses before 14:00. Not a pub you can miss as you pass by, funnily enough it is an old coaching inn and has a balcony which is described as “iconic”. It is the home of the Chalk Hill Brewery. Almost empty on our first visit but on returning after we left our digs for the match and then again after the final whistle there were plenty of football fans in. Good pub. At closing time when asked they even gave us some milk so that our morning coffee wasn’t black and my lost hat had been located and hung on a peg. I walked in next morning and had it handed back to me. Can only be honest though and say the beer wasn’t the best I’ve had recently. The rest of our party were in agreement on this although one did rate the Titanic Plum Porter highly.

The only other drinking establishment we visited was the Fat Cat and Canary half a mile away in the same street. It is a sister pub to the Fat Cat in the city centre and serves many of its beers. It was quite similar in many respects to the Coach and Horses. Again, we weren’t raving about the beer although it wasn’t bad.

Bit of a shame really because I’d heard really good things about Norwich as a real ale drinking city. The 2026 GBG lists 29 of its pubs. I need to try some more of them. We’ll be back next season. In League One. Well, that’s what it very much looked like on the evidence of the game we witnessed.

My mate who always insists on finding and (over) emphasising positives after every game summed the proceedings up thus: “Norwich were crap but we were crappier”. For him to say that really shows how bad it was. I totally concur with that view.

I have been 100% behind Gary Rowett until now. I always thought he’s the right man for the job. I still do actually, although questions have to be asked after this one, surely. And I’m pretty sure GR will now be questioning himself.  He admitted the plan was to stay in the game for an hour or so and then bring on the forwards to win it. I hate this “Gary Rowett your football is shit” song with a passion but FFS Norwich had played seven league games at home and lost the bloody lot. That’s a negative mindset to go into the game with. Yes, I know that we’ve got three games in seven days but it’s not as if Stan Mills, Filip Krastev and Nik Prelec will be knackered having not played that many minutes. Will Lankshear perhaps needed a bit of a rest but when I saw the starting line up, I wasn’t jumping for joy.

If our manager’s tactics had worked and we’d won, however boring it might have been, we wouldn’t be having this debate. I’d be very happy.

That Hidde ter Avest was back was a bonus but we weren’t all doom and gloom when he got injured back in August, were we?

An injury that does concern me massively is that to Cameron Brannagan. He was just getting back to form. The player with the best and most consistent shot on him. A player who can shoot from distance, a player who can put a free-kick away from way out when he has no right to do so. An inspiration.

Last season he only started 25 league games. I’ve had a look at the stats on Soccerbase – they include all competitions and I can’t be arsed to try and filter out cup games but this is very telling.

Our captain is out for a month we’ve been told. Another inspirational player we did not want to lose is Ciaron Brown, but injured he is and is out for a game or two at least. I’m expecting to see a lot more of Ben Davies now and for him to do a fine job for us.

One player whose omission from the starting XI wasn’t a surprise was that of Shemmy Placheta. There’s no denying he had a shocker against Middlesbrough. He did make the bench though, unlike another of our talented in their own way but highly frustrating players, Siriki Dembele. Is he injured or is he dropping down the pecking order as Tyler Goodrham very slowly climbs the other way?

To some extent I agree with the argument that we’re now a small fish in a very big pool. Punching, or trying to punch, above our weight and all that. Yes, absolutely when compared to the clubs at the top end of the table, the clubs with the benefit of huge parachute payments which vastly tilts the playing field. But also, there’s a no in there too.

There’s information out there that may not be totally accurate but there are websites who do a fair amount of research and come up with data that is reasonably reliable. Apparently, we’re the 15^th highest payers this season with an estimated wage bill of £13,751,400. One of the clubs spending less is Coventry City. Yes, the team 10 points clear at the top of the table.

My son points out that these figures include loan players, of which we’ve got a lot, and the parent club often continue to pay a high percentage of their wages. Also, some clubs have a lot more players listed than others.

However, a recent episode of the Price of Football podcast highlighted that over the last five or so years wages in L1 have shot up dramatically. I trust Keiran Maguire and his spreadsheets. He said that in the 2023/24 season (our promotion year) a number of teams in tier three had wage bills of over £10m. We were included in the list. That would support the fact we’re now paying nearly £14m two years later at a higher level.

I can understand why those putting the money in might not be very pleased with where we’re at right now playing wise.

With the game scoreless we hit the bar with a Brown header. We’d not had to work that hard to get that close which hinted at them being there for the taking. If that had gone in perhaps the home side would have crumbled. Their confidence must have been extremely delicate. New manager or not, they’d picked up just two points from the previous 12 games. No worries, Oxford were game 13. We let them grow in confidence.

Just before there was half an hour on the clock we went behind. From a corner we got everyone back in our penalty area and although the ball got cleared, we never really got out. When it was recycled, we still had seven men there. Norwich had four with another two in the D and an additional yellow shirt close by. Sam Long was out-jumped and a number of players converged as the ball dropped. Norwich won it and Jovon Makama fired home.

At the start of the second half, we were under the cosh. Josh Sargeant missed a very easy chance that the Canaries had done well to create. Thankfully for us his effort was straight at Jamie Cumming from close range.

Norwich were getting chances and with last ditch defending we kept the deficit at one. Something to be said for that I suppose but also fair to say we got away with it. On another day those chances would go in. And if it had been against a better more clinical team they definitely would have found the back of the net.

Four subs in one go smacks of desperation. Both Harrises plus Goodrham and ter Avest departed. Replaced by Mills, Prelec, Lankshear and Krastev. This was in the 66^th minute and I thought from then on in we did look more of an attacking threat.

However, many of us had concluded that if we were to get a point and it wasn’t dark it would have been a clear-cut case of day light robbery.

Six added minutes. Might as well have been sixty, we weren’t going to score. Into the 95^th minute. That was it. Then we did score. A quick instant boost of ecstasy. From about a 10% happiness rating to 100% in an instant. Then quickly back down again. To about 30% at a guess with the realisation that we’d only won a point against a team that couldn’t have been on worse form and weren’t very good.

But that kept us out of the bottom three. Well, for 24 hours only. Sheffield United’s hammering of Pompey put us there. On the bright side we’re much more likely to be in a battle with Portsmouth to avoid the drop come the season end than we are with Wilder’s Blades.

It was a good goal though and evidence that there is a bit of “never say die” spirit in there somewhere. The ball fell to Brian De Keersmaecker mid-way in the Norwich half. He fed an un-marked Mills on the right flank. Clearly nothing to lose now and we were at last throwing men forward in numbers. Long was one of those. He got into the corner of the penalty area and Mills quickly found him. Our full-back controlled and then squared the ball to Krastev whose first time expertly executed low side-foot finish registered his first goal for the club.

If I was a Norwich supporter I would have exploded with anger. But I’m not, I’m an Oxford supporter who briefly loved the moment.

The stats paint a somewhat different story to how I saw the game. There wasn’t much in it concerning possession, total shots, shots on target, the number of passes and accuracy of passes. The number of touches in the opposition box wasn’t that different either, 27-20 in the host’s favour.  What does stand out though is that they made 81 successful passes in the final third whereas we only did so 53 times. Also, we made 35 clearances to their 16. That much more fits my vision of the game.

We go again on Friday against a much better team than Norwich. Ipswich sit fourth with a game in hand on those above them and are unbeaten in six.

I’m trying to be optimistic but that’s difficult.