The League’s bottom club, Carlisle, visit the Third Division’s top team (that’s United, by the way) this Saturday. Carlisle have just five points, 36 fewer than Oxford, of which only one has been won away (a 2-2 draw at second from bottom Southend). United have failed to lose at home so far, and have only failed to win twice. Hmmm.

Having not had a proper game for a fortnight it is unclear who might be fit to play for the Us. Former injury victims Scott McNiven and Mark Rawle will both be hoping to be in contention, while James Hunt will be back from his one game suspension and Matt Bound will have recovered from the illness that forced him out of the game at Rochdale. There were excellent displays for the reserves on Monday by Lee Steele, Chris Hackett, Manny Omoyinmi and Danny Brown, all of whom will be hoping for a place on the bench at least.

Carlisle, of course, feature Paul Simpson as player-manager, and he can still swing a sweet left foot despite being as old as the hills (depending on how old any particular hill might be, naturally). Peter Murphy, Des Byrne, Steve Livingstone and former United loanee Craig Russell are all definitely ruled out of Carlisle’s squad due to injury.

Every team has a banana-skin type fixture, and for United this might well be it as everyone will be expecting the Us to win and the pressure will be on the home side to take the points. They should, of course, do just that and Rage Online uncharacteristically predicts a comfortable 3-0 win for United. However, don’t be surprised if they go and lose 1-0, just to be perverse.