Cambridge

This view is probably going to be all over the place – just like our defence (& when I say defence I don’t just mean the back line because every player, imho, has both attacking and defending duties to a greater or lesser degree) because I’m just going to bang it out – I’ll call it plan A. F*** there being a need for a plan B. I’ll just keep going regardless.

The definition of insanity it has been said is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

I’ve no doubt the current owners of, and management team at, OUR football club mean well but they are f*****g things up in a right royal way.

I heard it said after the game over a beautiful pint in the Cambridge Blue that either Michael Appleton has to change or we (the owners) have to change Appleton for someone else. Well, Mapp has said he won’t change and some of us have the feeling that his is one of the safest jobs in football. It shouldn’t be. He’s even been given a budget that some of our previous managers would gleefully rub their hands at believing they were in dream land. If this is true I can only conclude that we are pretty much screwed.

We were, not for the first time, utterly humiliated on television. I’ve no idea what the viewing figures for this would be but I’m utterly embarrassed that anyone outside the Oxford United brotherhood has now seen the evidence of a football team with no heart, soul, bottle or substance. Call it what you will. I’m ****ing totally ****ing sick of it.

At the end of the game a sizeable proportion of our turnout of near on 500 clapped the players. WTF was that all about. Really! Loyal supporters and all that, but come on. Humour, “you’re nothing special, we lose every week”, fine but I hurt so much after that I was more behind the one guy who was shouting anti Appleton stuff. It was nothing rude and he had not expressed any such opinion during the game.

Appleton out or in? – “But it’s early days”. But no go on. “Wait until Christmas”. Could be too late by then. You have a voting button you have to press NOW or else. So Appleton out or in? For me it would be OUT.

Last week I referred to “a proper gritty never say die performance” and said that IF we can keep that up and mesh it into our passing game we should be alright and IF we can start scoring goals we should be a bit better than that.

IF’s may not really be questions but they kind of are and now I have my answers. No, we can’t mesh it – we only did it last week because the 10 man thing turned it into a “needs must”. Scoring goals – not likely to trouble the score board that often the way we play. Opposition managers have sussed us out. A quote from one recently told the story. It went something like this – Oxford play pretty football; it is all in front of our back line. It doesn’t hurt us. They can see it. I can see it. And most fans I know feel the same too. But perhaps I’m just attracted to like minded people because overall there does not seem to be a massive anti groundswell of opinion. (I have decided to write this before venturing on to Rage Online or the Yellows Forum).

About 15 minutes in to any game is usually the time I feel I am beginning to get some sort of grasp of what it’s all about and how it might pan out. At this point we were one up and had played some proper passing football. But so too had Cambridge and I thought they were the better team. I feared for the outcome. We had holes in us and I was surprised that we made it through to 41 minutes before conceding. I wasn’t surprised that we were losing by the break.

Luke Chadwick had so much space in which to control the midfield it was criminal. Marking the opposition seemed to be an alien concept to us. In contrast, whenever Callum O’Dowda got the ball he had two or even three men crowding him out. Or if not, one very tight and another dropped slightly off to take the ball should he get past the first man.

As has been said before, our holding midfielders don’t hold. The massively disappointing Brian Howard and Michael Collins might be able to produce a bit of pretty tippy tappy crappy stuff in midfield but the blood sweat and tears were nowhere. Danny Rose I would exempt from this. He was the best of a bad bunch of under achievers.

I honestly believe that we have some of the best players in League Two. I also believe that we have one of the worst teams. That has to be down to the manager doesn’t it? And if Derek Fazakerly is such a good coach why aren’t we winning football matches?

As I’ve said before, I’m not convinced our so called good football is actually much good at all. On Saturday we were looking to pass it as usual but many times when an Oxford player got the ball he had to stop and look about to find the pass, any pass, pass backwards, that he has had ingrained into him. It didn’t happen naturally. We often didn’t do this with ease and never at speed.

I have nothing but praise for newly promoted Cambridge, they were streets ahead of us, could have had more than the five they bagged and had a front two who were tremendously effective. Did Johnny Mullins win anything in the air? We in contrast never had anything going at all up top and Danny Hylton was a forlorn figure whose head, possibly understandably, went down.

So many players had off days but we keep hearing they like to play the Appleton way. To me that’s the losing way. Would Roy Keane settle for this?

I think the reason for the off days is that the set up is all wrong and individual form is bound to suffer when we’re being tonked because we have a tactically naive master. Furthermore the players aren’t going to come out and say this is all wrong are they? But who can blame them because if they did they would probably be out in the cold.

Andy Whing is possibly all or some of the answer to our midfield defensive vacuum but that card should be played from the off or when protecting a lead. Not when we are 3-1 down. Anyway he seemed as hapless as most of the others when he came on.

This performance has wiped out the positivity I felt after the Newport win and some.

But I have to try and find some positives otherwise I’ll go mad. So what can I come up with?

A faultless pint on the way home in probably my favourite pub in all of Oxfordshire, the Peyton Arms in Stoke Lyne. But that’s beer not football. Pick the right pub and you’ll not be let down like your football team lets you down week after week after week.

On the football front, and I can’t believe I’m saying this given how disappointed I have been with him, we’ll have Tyrone Barnett available next week. I think we could have done with him today. He couldn’t have won fewer headers than Hylton did.

And Will Hoskins will be back at some stage. He will of course need a decent supply to do his business.

Too early to call next week’s game a relegation battle? Of course not. We’re in the bottom two with a miserable points tally. We have not ended up there by bad luck.