Pre- match thoughts on our opponents Pre-season Bury splashed the cash. We’d supposedly offered Chris Maguire a good deal but Bury bettered it. They brought in Jermaine Beckford and plenty of others. I don’t rate Lee Clark as a manager and doubted he would get the best out of Maguire. Clark was sacked on 30  [ more ]

Checkatrade In stark contrast to the Carabao and FA cups where we stayed rooted to the starting blocks, we just keep on running and running in this bloody trophy. Still, there is monetary reward and at the end of it the supposed glory of playing at Wembley in a major final. Did I say major?  [ more ]

Progress or not since our trip to the seaside We played Blackpool at Bloomfield Road back in mid-September. It was then our worst performance of the season and resulted in our second league defeat. We played in that awful black kit (*). Our previously strong defence was poor and that was with Curtis Nelson in  [ more ]

Oxford United 3 MK Dons 1 We drew with the Dons at Stadium MK on 2 September. My recollection is that it was no more than an okay game with us being the better side initially only for the home side to come back into it and then we missed golden chances to have taken  [ more ]

Bradford City 3 Oxford United 2 We drew 2-2 with Bradford at the Kassam on a Tuesday night back in September. It was a cracking game of football with what appeared to be quality players on both sides. Robbie Hall was on fire. That result left us 8th on 12 points having played seven games.  [ more ]

Gillingham 1 Oxford United 1 The visit to Priestfield marked the start of the second half of the 2017/18 campaign and coming up against a side for a second time provides an opportunity to assess progress or otherwise. In early September we beat the Gills at the Kassam stadium. After an even first half we  [ more ]

Wigan Athletic: Finances, Ownership and a bit of History Wigan Athletic were only elected to the Football League in 1978. That’s a fair few years after some of us started watching Oxford United and yes that is “elected” and not won on merit. Southport were booted out. Wigan were the last team to be voted  [ more ]

Rochdale 0 Oxford United 0 After this drab encounter I felt both great disappointment and also a strange satisfaction. Given the temperature, the conditions, the journey up with a delay on the M6 and then M62, having diverted and opted for the M1, we needed something to warm the cockles of the heart. We didn’t  [ more ]

Free Saturday and the Checkatrade During the season, going a fortnight without watching an Oxford United game is a long time for me but it’s kind of relaxing, provided of course I’ve not got a lengthy period to dwell on a dreadful defeat. That point at Roots Hall was fine by me. That we had  [ more ]

Southend United finances and ownership Since I’ve been watching football over many decades a whole host of clubs have moved ground and whilst reasons for this have been varied, the most common is to eventually become more profitable. There are still some looking to go down this route which often comes with a dream, or  [ more ]