FAN’S VIEW  2025/26 – STOKE AWAY

After this defeat my guesstimate of the chances of us remaining in the Championship next season has decreased from 2% to 1.75%. To see if I was way out in my thinking, I forced myself to look at the oddschecker site. We’re 1/9 for the drop. The next two deemed most likely to join us and Wednesday in tier 3 are Leicester (13/8) and West Brom (7/4).

Although it could be a couple of points fewer needed for survival this time, I’m going to go with the oft quoted 50 equals having just scrambled over the line, although that’s not always so.

To reach 50 points with just 12 games remaining we need seven wins. We’ve played 34 games to date and have only won six. We have not achieved back-to-back league wins for over 13 months. Our away form is actually better than last season. It’s at home where we’ve collapsed. So it’s no comfort at all that seven of the dozen fixtures left are at the Kassam.

We know we don’t score enough goals to stay up but some excellent defensive displays where we’ve looked well organised and solid, such as at Middlesbrough, has brought a tiny glimmer of hope for the future.

At the Bet 365 Stadium that solidarity and shape wasn’t there. At no time, unlike in some games, did I genuinely feel that we’d keep the opposition out when they attacked. The home side had 21 shots, nine of which were on target. They might be a mid-table outfit but whoever we play they now usually look a class above us. Stoke had done their homework and stretched us this way and that. They had width with Sorba Thomas looking a particular threat. They also hit us on the break through the middle more than once.

I thought we always looked quite vulnerable and at no time during the game had I really been convinced that we would get anything out of it. Not even a point let alone the three we most clearly needed.

The goal just before the break gave a temporary morale boost as did the way we started the second period with a bit more energy closing down and getting at the opposition but that was relatively short lived and no way enough to suggest that we’ve got what it takes to get out of the massive hole we’re in.

Every now and again we play a bit of good football but this is few and far between. Much too rare to be able to lay claim to truly belonging at this level. Other teams do it so much more frequently and with much greater ease. We just can’t keep the ball. Opponents can.

I’m not a supporter who has ever got wrapped up in the “possession obsession” thinking and understand that some teams willingly let the other team have more of the ball as part of their game plan to come out as winners. With us the other team always has more of the ball than we do because they’re better than us. We struggle to get it off them when we need to and when we have it, we lose it quite quickly. We don’t string passes  together.

The possession stats here show that we had the ball 39% of the time.

Every now and again one of our players does something that makes you think, I liked that, they’ve got something about them. But this is all too infrequent and more often than not it’s a piece of individual skill and not as part of an effective unit that has been honed over the course of the seven months of this season that has already passed.

In fact I’d go as far as saying that as a team we’ve hardly got out of the starting blocks that all clubs pushed out from when all those referees blew all those whistles back in early August.

We still look in the experimental stage and that should have been left behind pre-season. As a team, we’ve not got an identity.

We have used so many players and still as fans we don’t have much of a clue as to what the starting XI will be on any one day or what our formation will be. Little wonder that very few partnerships have formed.

Changing manager may be a small factor in all this and probably even more so the number of injured players we’ve had at any one time. Injuries are one of those topics that football fans will forever debate. Often the conclusion is that we’re not unlucky it’s the same at all clubs. I’ve got no data in front of me to support what I’m going to say but I’d question that and alongside injuries would place match fitness. Have we brought in players who have been carrying something that has limited their ability to perform close to 100%? Have we brought in players who were not match ready for the rigours of the Championship when they needed to be?

Jeon Jin-Woo might be something a bit special, but he hadn’t played for about two months when we signed him. He was taken off at half time.

Woo was replaced by Aidomo Emakhu. Who’s that? we asked. All these names come thick and fast and when you get to a certain age are hard to remember. “The Millwall lad” someone offered. Is he on loan or have we signed him? was a question asked. One person knew “he’s ours now”. Emakhu looked a very capable wide man. So much so that Stoke doubled up on him very quickly. He was still able to get in one wicked ball that, typical Oxford, no-one could get on the end of. Right near the end of the game after we’d used all of our subs he appeared to pull a groin and was in obvious pain. Instead of going down and staying down he hobbled about. Didn’t look good but I hope he knew what he was doing and wasn’t inflicting unnecessary damage.

We saw Nic Prelec for the first time since late December. He was on loan but we’ve now signed him permanently. He’s scored one goal in 12 starts.

Might be very controversial but I’m going to throw it out there – could the club have thrown in the towel this season and be currently building a side to get us straight back up in 26/27? There’s no way of course that they would, or should, admit that to the fans.

(It’s now quite late on Friday evening and we’ve got a game tomorrow so I’m going to rattle out the rest of this without too much thought)

There are a few other players I feel a need to comment on.

I’ll start with Sam Long. He only got a starting place back because Brodie Spencer got injured in the warm up, but if ever you want a player who is wholeheartedly 100% your football club through and through, Sam’s your man. I recall him late on hitting a long ball forward down the wing that no-one got on to because of a potential flag and he went racing after it himself as a rugby player does to play colleagues onside with all around in seeming slow motion.

Ole Romeny – I’ll say it again. He might have something about him after all.

Cameron Brannagan – I thought he was having a decent game but he can’t be properly fit can he if he keeps getting taken off?

I rate Christ Makosso incredibly highly even if I think he’s got one mistake in him per game. Brilliant part of the future build. Then I’m reminded that he’s only on loan from Luton. Bugger.

Will Vaulks. Great guy, but I don’t think he’s Championship standard. I thought he gave the ball away much too often. I spoke out loud to those around me during the game “Vaulks is not Championship standard”. A reply was “Not in our team he isn’t”. Great comment which provided me with much food for thought.

(I’ve written all of the above without watching replays of the goals from the game but am going to take a couple of minutes to do so now to see if that will change my opinion on anything).

The opener came from a Vaulks long throw into the Stoke penalty area and the way it panned out I’m not blaming Bran for us conceding. It was one of those where you just don’t quite get to the ball first. They’d won the header and hit us on the counter in the blink of an eye. The scorer, Lamine Cisse, was much more of a Usain Bolt than anyone wearing the dark Oxford shirt. Straight down the middle he went. Simple as.

Our equaliser was a goal of supreme class, very much an outlier in what we generally produce on the field of play. A short corner with first time passes pinging the ball about and an accurately chipped ball onto Stan Mills’ head which found Keiran Brown, who volleyed home in emphatic fashion. The home defence was bemused and didn’t get near us as for once we found space.

Before the winner came, we hit the bar and instead of getting a blatantly obvious corner, had to retreat for a goal kick. Both sides had cause to be unhappy with the referee.    

Their second came from a decent cross but we should have dealt with it at the far post. We didn’t so we went home empty handed.

Not our worst performance of the season but the bar has been set rather low. I joined in the clapping when the players came over as I headed for the exit. It wasn’t in the most enthusiastic manner I’ve ever put my hands together though.

Following a football team can be a real bummer at times but as ever there’s a need to put it all into perspective.

If we think we’ve got it tough, what about Sheffield Wednesday fans? The proposed takeover of their club has, not surprisingly for those who have followed the saga, collapsed. When the administrators now do get a sale, the price will not be high enough for the unsecured creditors to get 25p in the pound, therefore another 15 points deduction will be on the horizon. My understanding is that this would come next season in League One.

Then there’s the little things that you’re glad happen to someone else and not you.

The mobile phone dropped in the urinal trough at half time. And we all know what urinal troughs contain.

The car that had parked on the grass at Longton Rugby club being unable to move due to the rain turning it into a Baseball Ground like surface. The wheels just spun and spun. Eventually enough people came to the driver’s rescue to push and bounce it away to a sounder surface.

And on a more serious note I’ve got a few football friends who are currently facing challenges that makes the game that consumes us so much seem not that important at all really.

But for all this I can finish this FV on a huge positive. The biggest for years and years. The formal signing of the Section 106 Planning Agreement with Oxfordshire County Council and Cherwell District Council. So that’s the full and final planning permission for the new stadium at the Triangle issued. That’s a huge milestone reached. GET IN.