FAN’S VIEW 26/27 – CARABAO CUP

LEYTON ORIENT 2 OXFORD UNITED 0

To put it mildly much has happened since my last FV. We were already down when we visited Millwall on 2 May.

On 6 May Dusan Bogdanovitch replaced Grant Ferguson as Chairman.

On 20 June head coach Matt Bloomfield was sacked.

Three days later Aaron Ramsey was announced as his replacement.

On 9 July the EFL placed us under a transfer embargo after failing to comply with the Salary Cost Management Protocol (SCMP).

Old news now of course but there’s a lot here to unpack. I could write pages and pages but I’ve neither the time nor inclination to do that.

We never used to be a sacking club. We now appear very much to be one.  

The silence from Bogdanovitch was extremely worrying. Then about a week ago reps of OxVox and the FAB had a meeting with him on Teams. I’ve read the OxVox write up of this and became very optimistic – and that’s not like me. Everything sounded positive but as DB himself acknowledged talk is one thing, actions to deliver on that talk is another. Big caveat there.

I particularly liked that various reviews are taking place covering the club’s support structure and recruitment along with ensuring we don’t overspend. This strongly hints that there has been a recognition that we have fallen down in these areas in the past.

As for the embargo there was no way that we were not going to get caught out having obviously had to pay Championship wages in the Championship and not owning our own ground. Perhaps we could have better placed ourselves to deal with the drop down a division though.

Before I knew we wouldn’t be allowed to sign players I thought this season we’d be upper mid table or at the very best battling for a lower play-off place. I could see nothing to convince me we would be challenging at the very top. Now I know we can’t bring anyone in until January I’m just looking at survival. That’s a very low bar I know but that’s how I feel.

With regard to getting ourselves into a position where we can once again sign players, Bogdanovic has said that the club “do not believe that large scale player sales is a prudent approach, and is one that could cause further harm moving forward. Instead, the owners are committed to injecting equity over the coming months to ensure we become compliant in advance of January. This protects the bulk of the squad whilst also demonstrating a path to resolving this”.

I’ve got to confess that when last season ended, I said that I wouldn’t be that disappointed if any of the contracted players, except one, were to be gone by this coming campaign. Sorry guys but that was how I genuinely felt. The exception being Stan Mills.

Bogdanovic’s words do not give any guarantees that some players will not be sold. Whatever the situation every player at every club has a price. If the money offered looks crazy then take it. And if a player’s heart is not in it there’s no point in keeping him.

At times like this rumour, conspiracy theory and social media nonsense along with the odd bit of sense abound. Stan Mills to Preston for £4m? He’s missed a couple of days training so that means he’s off. He’s done nothing to indicate he’s disloyal. I think there’s as much chance of him staying than going if not more so. The way things stand he could be the difference between going down and staying up. If that’s what our club believes then I’d argue he is worth at least £20m to us and no other club is going to pay that. He’s been our best, most exciting player recently but hardly proven on a consistent basis yet. 48 league starts, 29 off the bench and five goals. He’s only 22, turning 23 in a couple of months. Plenty of years ahead of him but not a youngster in footballing terms. His usefulness for us will be greatly diminished if we don’t have a forward worthy of the name who can put the ball into the back of the net.

Any sale though will bring in money to close the gap and get us closer to being SCMP compliant. How big that gap is we don’t know. Someone within the club has been working on that no doubt.  Well, hopefully.

Mills didn’t start at Brisbane Road. He wasn’t even on the bench. More food to feed conspiracy hunger but is he just being saved for L1 action?

Another non starter was Michal Helik. He was a sub but didn’t come on. It seems to be generally accepted that he is, well was in the Championship, on £17k per week. Certainly not worth that in tier 3 and if he is not in the first XI presumably someone we’re looking to get off the payroll for obvious reasons. The downside to doing so would be how light we’d then be left as far as centre-halves go.

Brian De Keersmaecker, I’ve heard it said, doesn’t want to play for us. Doesn’t want to play in L1. Not committed. Would have played on last season if he cared about us instead of opting to have an operation on the shoulder which was badly injured against Leicester in January. Ramsey talks of getting him to match fitness. Others were not convinced by BDK last season. I thought he had quality. I liked what I saw. But if he wants away then get what we can for him and get him off the wage bill.

As far as I can gather there’s no talk, true or false, of anyone else looking to escape the club.

The debate on WhatsApp I was involved in after this defeat was whether it was 15, 10 or 5 minutes at the start of the game when we were the better team. I’d go for somewhere between 10 and 15.

In that period we looked very superior. Keeping the ball and seemingly a class above the O’s. Siriki Dembele has many critics and I can see why but during this brief period he impressed. Tricky on the ball, could go past a man and, wait for this, passed sensibly too. He’s been with us for two years. Our record signing at the time. He’s only made 19 starts and has scored just two league goals. Another bit of evidence that the recruitment boys have not been covering themselves in glory in recent years.

Thereafter though he wasn’t noticeable and the team proceeded to put on a non-performance. One of the worst in recent years.

It’s the done thing at the final whistle for players to come across to the travelling fans and clap them. The fans do the same back. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. As I was trying to make a hasty exit most yellows around me were indeed putting their hands together. For me to have done so would have been hypocritical. I’m not going to go through the motions just for the sake of it. Whilst it was tempted to let fly with a few choice words, I managed to keep them in. Instead I just yelled “You’ve got to do better than that” and turned and got out of there.

It didn’t take long to work out that Orient are nowhere near the standard we saw in the Championship but when it was all over, they unquestionably deserved to be the winners. I still didn’t rate them though which says a lot about us.

Losing like this got me really angry and worried about the immediate future.

So what? some might say. It’s only the first game of the season and not a league game either. Cup runs can bring money in particularly if drawn away against certain large clubs even in this competition. We need every penny we can get. Winning boosts morale. It is infectious. (Forget friendlies).

It’s probably not helpful to pick on certain players but if they are not performing to the standard required I can’t see any point in pretending otherwise.

It didn’t take me long to have placed Mark Harris and Tyler Goodrham in this category. Sparky seemed incapable of controlling the ball or holding it up. He wasn’t winning physical battles and looked about as likely to score as any random fan sat in the stands. In his defence it has been pointed out to me that he scored 15 league goals in our promotion season and a centre-forward thrives on chances created. We lacked creativity. We lacked decent crosses into the box.

Goodrham did very little and none of that was noteworthy.

Very disappointing. Someone has to step up.

But it wasn’t just those two it was almost everyone. Cameron Brannagan has to be better than that and Jamie McDonnell too. If they don’t improve on this showing we’re screwed.

Of those that started, the only other attacking player I’ve not yet mentioned is Aidomo Emakhu. Too early to tell yet. He only joined us in February. He’ll be 23 in October. Thus far he has made five league starts and has come on as sub six times. He is yet to score. We supposedly paid about a million pounds for him. Time will tell but on what I’ve seen so far there’s players like him around that have cost less or even been picked up on a free. Faith in the recruitment team? Perhaps he’ll become a Mills who took a little time to convince us that he is the player we think he now is.

There was so much wrong with this display it was scary. I had no idea what our game plan was or if we had even thought about how we might score a goal.

I think the opposition were content to let any of our defenders have the ball, Sam Long in particular – but perhaps he showed for it more than the others. No-one appeared to want it. No one was looking for space to get it. We either didn’t intend to play out from the back or were incapable of doing so. With options not being available a noticeably frustrated Jamie Cumming had to go long when every time the inevitable happened –  we conceded possession.

Just about everything we did came across as pedestrian. Except for once that I can recall in the second half. The ball was moved quickly, one touch, two touch, players were available. Emakhu got away down the right. Nothing came of it but surely we should be looking to play like this on and off during many periods of a game.

The subs made no difference. Gatlin O’Donkor replaced Dembele in the 62^nd minute. He now looks more like a footballer, less muscle bound. The fans sing his name in desperate hope that he will be our saviour. In his first challenge he let the centre-half know he was there. Something Sparky never really did in the 85 minutes he spent on the pitch.

Would it be unfair to be too critical of the defence for their defensive work? We did after all keep Orient out until the 85^th minute. And up until then it wasn’t as if we’d been battered with it only being a matter of time before they scored. But score they did.

With five minutes of the 90 left I would have expected us to really go for it. Perhaps expose ourselves to getting caught on the break but obviously we had nothing to lose.

What happened was we let in a second without even having slung everyone forward in desperation. The scorer this time was Idris El Mizouni. As a Championship club we paid £400k for him in July 2024. He stayed a year before signing for Orient in L1 for an undisclosed fee which at the time they said was the most they’d ever paid for a player. I’d still guess we lost a bit on him. He only made 12 starts for us and came on 16 times in the league scoring just once. His heart was likely always more in Orient having previously played 79 league games on loan there. Another piece of recruitment by us that didn’t come off? No club is going to get it right all of the time but I do wonder, I really do.

Did we want to score a goal? At times it didn’t look like we did. When a team is not fashioning any chances from open play then doesn’t logic say get the ball in the box at every opportunity from free-kicks with our centre-halves sent up to try and win it. But no, take it short, tap it sideways, go nowhere.

I’d like to say it’s good to be back. It wasn’t.

It could have been. The sun was shining; we had a really good turnout on the terraces. The fans got behind the team. The old school low roof, which went with the old-fashioned turnstiles, helped with keeping the noise in. If only the team had responded accordingly.

Pre-match it was the Northcote Arms for us. A traditional local pub I’ve never visited before but one I’d be more than happy to go back to when we return for the league game. Ignore the “home fans only” sign stuck on the door. All drinking establishments in the area seemed to have exactly the same on the way in. Just for show? Just for the police? The Northcote had many on the premises wearing Oxford colours. Not a problem. Never was going to be. I will admit to being a bit peed off with the time it took to get served, thinking that perhaps a local was given preference and that some of the drinks poured were not quite the full measure but on reflection I think this was down to no more than lack of awareness. The beers come from breweries within a few miles and very drinkable they were too. They were only £4.90 a pint and that’s without the CAMRA discount of which I was not aware at the time.

It’s been said to me that my away days are more about the beer than the football. It might look that way at times, but not true. Chatting to fellow yellows and often home fans too in decent boozers, drinking decent pints all over the country is of course very much part of the day/evening. Not too many, even though an array of handpumps can be very tempting. I want to be able to watch the game and know – roughly – what is going on. Cans on the train on the way have never appealed to me. Each to their own.

If it was a choice between the football or the beer it has always been the football however miserable that often makes me feel. However, if Saturday is anything to go by for what lies ahead, I may have to review that thinking.

Gloomy enough thus far people? Shall I make it worse. Jerome mentioned it on Radio Oxford. It is now likely that we won’t know the outcome of the oral hearing that FoSB have requested until October. The High Court has a target of one month of receiving the notice which meant we should have heard by late July/early August. We’re now into the second week of August. No-one can find that the case has actually been scheduled. That target isn’t cast in stone. There is a backlog of cases.

The High Court has a summer vacation which runs from 1 August 2026 to 1 October 2026 during which time only applications of “real urgency” are dealt with. It might be of more than real urgency to us but outside of Oxfordshire and our core support no-one will likely give a toss. Meanwhile the whole stinking system which is not fit for purpose has allowed a few people under the guise of being friends of a piece of land to cynically and vindictively cause delay after delay.

Tell me it can only get better. Please.

I’ll try and end on a positive of sorts. Jack Currie, our best player.