FAN’S VIEW 22/23 – No.10: BURTON AT HOME

Wasn’t at the game

Still don’t do the Papa John’s as a matter of principle. Can’t be doing with the Big Boys U21s being involved. I was expecting our youngsters to be given a good run out.  Four were but only off the bench which was a little surprising.

I’ve seen the goals and it all looked so very easy. The 1,374 who were there will know if that was the reality. Scoring goals has been an issue for us this season up to now but with Robbie Fowler sat on the bench we got five. Could be a coincidence. Fowler has a son, called Jacob, who had a trial at Rangers in July. Fowler junior played 45 minutes in a pre-season game against Carlisle for them. Last month he signed a scholarship not with Rangers but with Oxford United. That he and his Dad are at the same club another happenstance? Gossip and rumour can really take off but I’d like to think I’m not into that. (Might not be true though). All I’ll say is that I sincerely hope all decisions have been made with the best interests of the football club at heart.

Also a clean sheet is an achievement and with Eddie McGinty between the sticks at that.

Where we’re at on the pitch and what can we realistically hope for?

Nothing can be taken for granted so I never went along with the assumption that some fans seemed to have that we would pick up loads of points from the early games as they were against the weaker teams in the division and set ourselves up nicely for when we faced the big hitters. That said I 100% expected us to have more than our paltry total of just seven points from six games and I’m even more peed off given that much of the opposition has indeed been poor.

It’s not just me. I think there is a consensus amongst many yellows that we’ve really cocked up on the recruitment front, giving contracts to injury prone players who will hardly play and not strengthening in areas where the weaknesses are as plain as day.

Who has the final say when we bring players in? We don’t know. We don’t have a Director of Football. Our owner and directors are a very long way away. Niall McWilliams as Managing Director I assume is Stratfield Brake focussed and Karl should mostly be managing and coaching those that are already under contract. The more I think about it the more I would love to know the decision making process on recruitment and the signing of players.

For all my negativity, which I think is based on being realistic, I’ve still got this crazy hope that we’ll cobble together enough points to keep us in mid-table whilst key players, Sam Baldock and Marcus Browne, are out. Then they’ll come back in early October never to get injured again and we’ll storm to the top. That of course is ignoring so many things. Lack of full-back cover. Lack of width. Lack of pace. Goalkeeping. One has to dream. And there are those youngsters. And we have Cameron Brannagan and Marcus McGuane fit and playing well.

Jodi Jones

What a very strange case. Very injury prone, that’s known. We sign him for a year. He’s not listed as one of our many currently unavailable. He came on for four minutes against Cambridge and then the first half against Swansea. The following Saturday he appeared in the last minute against Bristol Rovers and that’s it. He was on the bench but stayed there for the next three games. In the last two he’s not even got that far. There were strong rumours he was going to go out on loan but he is still with us.

Djavan Anderson

On paper a fair few boxes are ticked. “He’s a wing-back”. He is “very fast”. He can also “play in midfield or on the wing”. But we play on grass and L1 is likely a very different game to the stuff he has played in Serie A & B. Best to wait and see.

Another one on the wage bill. Hope we get value this time. It might be quite frightening to know how much debt the club is presently carrying.

According to Wikipedia as a youngster he briefly interrupted his football career to pursue a career in gymnastics. Irrelevant of course but I find such trivia interesting.

Our opponents

Talk about playing weak teams, they’ve gone about taking the title of the weakest of the lot half a dozen games in. A few games back I had them down as the whipping boys. They’ve only got one point having been beaten five times. They’ve not scored in three home games but have got seven in the last two on their travels so it is not as though they can’t score but they let them in at an alarming rate too. Their draw was 4-4 at Accrington and last week, despite having a man sent off in the 10^th minute, only went down 4-3 at Cambridge.

Just four seasons ago they were in the Championship and whilst they are a small club in L1 they were miniscule at that level. I believe their wage bill was about a third of the next lowest tier 2 in 2018.

To year end 31/05/21 they made a profit of £133k with the balance sheet showing net assets of £4.9m. Staff costs were only £4.2m. Commercial income was £3.3m. A club owning its own ground helps. Gate receipts were non-existent in this Covid year. Other operating income was £1.7m made up mostly of £936k worth of government grants and £620k of insurance money. Perhaps they were one of the very few clubs who had cover that included a Covid type event.

Chairman Ben Robinson owns 98% of the club’s shares. He’s a local boy from humble beginnings who made good. He’s been around the Brewers for decades having first been involved in 1974/75. This is his second stint as chairman, his first being from 1976-84. His great grandfather was a Cherokee Native American. More interesting trivia.

Oxford United 2 Burton Albion 1

Rose & Crown early doors

Making home games as away game-ish as possible by leaving the house early and starting in Oxford pubs before mid-day may become the norm ( possibly only until the weather turns) and I did it again for this one. The football is not really doing it for me at the moment so why not? This meant that I left to catch the S5 not long after the postman (or woman) shoved a large white envelope through our letter box. I didn’t have time to look at the content in any detail but it gave the date of the OUFC AGM and copies of the accounts to y/e 2020 and 2021. I thought it had been a long time.

By the time of the next FV I will have perused them but beer was calling.

When there’s still a few minutes before a pub opens what better way to pass the time than a coffee?  North Parade has a choice. As the Rabbit Hole (great name) is currently closed, Viny’s café was my pick. Whilst the cappuccino was a tad too hot for me it knocked spots off that awful product I had at Cheltenham last week.

Anyway I digress and I’ve not even got into the pub yet let alone the Kassam Stadium. The Rose and Crown two doors away from Viny’s opened at 11:30. Myself and a couple of mates were soon in the pub garden, which is one of the very best in Oxford, discussing OUFC, football in general, which centre-half if any will be able to handle Erling Haaland (conclusion, possibly only Virgil van Dijk) and the terrible state of the world in 2022. The real ale was of excellent quality and the best we had all day with the standard declining with each pub visited. (All a matter of opinion of course). Google maps describes the Rose and Crown thus: “Cosy, quirky and enduring local pub”. I recommend it.

Next the Bear where the Fullers was decent enough and we saw other Oxford fans and I started to get a bit of a match day feel. After that it was the Chester Arms for the second time in a fortnight. In here I thought the craft beer topped the real stuff by some distance, but hey ho!

Okay, the football. That’s the main reason I write this stuff but in this instance I’d almost rather continue waffling on about pints and pubs, coffees and cafes, the weather, etc. etc.

Not every fan is of a like mind but when describing a performance or giving an opinion many cannot do so without throwing in an expletive or two. So this is my summary of the first half. Burton were ****ing sh*t. We were ****ing sh*t. Referee Bobby Madden was ****ing sh*t. How very articulate of me.

I remember one low Cameron Brannagan shot that forced Brewer’s keeper Viljami Sinisalo down low to make a save but as an attacking force, not a lot else. Their threat was really limited too. They fired a shot just wide from a corner but, like us, not a lot else.

I don’t think I could argue that the game was even L2 standard. It wasn’t as if this was a one off from us because we haven’t properly got going all season. I’m not saying my patience has run out but people are paying good money to watch far from entertaining fare week after week now and in this match the way we were playing gave no guarantee that we would go on to win in the second half.

Beforehand I’d been completely convinced that we’d get the three points. So much so that I found the Betfred odds on an Oxford victory at 3/5 too tempting and gambled our latest leftover away day drinking kitty on it. I’d sensed optimism amongst other Oxford fans too, some thinking we’d win by a wide margin. Now I was not so sure. Not sure at all.

Burton really were awful. Quite possibly the worst team we’ve seen in League One since we got back to this level. Their only noticeable attacking strategy was long throws and a bit of physicality from Victor Adeboyejo.

That our goals were scrappy was in perfect fitting with the game as a whole. The first came just three minutes after the re-start. Simon Eastwood kicked it long and despite being grappled with from behind, Kyle Joseph managed to keep the ball live attacking wise. Gatlin O’Donkor and Adedeji Oshilaja both went for the loose ball with neither doing much with it. I’ll give our youngster the benefit of any doubt and say his toe poke to Brannagan was intended.

Cam’s the man. I’d heard comment that he was carrying the team. I wouldn’t quite go that far but could see exactly where they were coming from. He quickly moved the ball on to Joseph who turned and shot from just outside the penalty area. A massive deflection took the ball way over Sinisalo and onto the bar. The on rushing Brannagan, who wanted it more than anyone else on the pitch, took it on then slammed home from close range. He deserved it. We possibly deserved it because we were a bit less **** than Burton were.

Now surely we would go on to win it with ease and score the big numbers some had predicted.

Most news we get on injuries is of the bad variety. We’re resigned to it. It’s just a case of finding out who the next casualties are. Today it was Steve Seddon and Matty Taylor. For ****s sake when will it end?

Here’s a huge positive though. Marcus Browne, who we thought was out until October, was named as a substitute and came on in the 56^th minute for O’Donkor.

As a threat in the final third MB was on a different level to anyone else on the pitch and we started to play some football that was well worth watching. We now looked vastly superior to our opponents.

It still took over 20 minutes to get our second and that was a gift of sorts. Brannagan, who did a hell of a lot of defensive work, swivelled and banged a long ball back into Burton territory where a defender got under it.  James Henry won the second ball and through it went to Joseph with the Burton defence looking every bit the worst in the division that they are. He hit it quite hard along the ground but Sinisalo had plenty of time to see it and react didn’t he? Into the net through the keeper’s legs went the ball. 2-0.

Burton have conceded 20 goals in seven games. That’s six more than any other team.

Having regularly been very critical of our defending and defensive record it is only fair to point out that we’ve only let in seven. The ratio of exactly one per game is an improvement on last season although we’ve not played the best teams yet.

Instead of our two goal lead being added to, it was halved on 78 minutes. When Sam Long was about to get his head on a long ball hammered forward by a Burton defender he was shoved in the back by Adeboyejo. Don’t give me this “out-muscled” crap. It was a foul. It doesn’t take much to push big strong lads over if the offender picks his moment and the balance is just right. It’s cheating but the standard of refereeing is absolutely woeful at the moment in many matches. It’s laughable in the Premier League so just think what we have to put up with. Bobby Madden didn’t blow his whistle.

Adeboyejo carried on, got in the box, cut inside a couple of yellow shirts and fired home. That the last despairing challenge was from Brannagan speaks volumes of his work rate.

Right, let’s discuss Madden. When fans feel the need to be critical of a referee even though their team has won is compelling evidence of how woeful an official has been. Madden has to be one of the worst. From the off Tom Hamer was taking an age over his long throw-ins and there was bafflement when he only added one minute to the first half. To then tell our manager that time wasted at throw-ins does not come into the equation when calculations are made is ridiculous. What kind of a message does that send out to the Graham Westleys and Steve Evanses of this world?

To make matters worse Madden was laughing as he strode off for his half time cuppa. Then when we were winning he conjured up seven to be added to the ninety.

He was another referee who just ignores shirt pulling and holding a lot of the time. He helped contribute to a low quality football match and did O’Donkor no favours. Our youngster was grappled with constantly but had little protection.

This is Madden’s first season covering EFL 1 & 2 with him previously officiating in the Scottish Premiership. He’s done Europa League games and some World Cup qualifiers. Germany 3 Faroe Islands 0 and Russia 4 Luxembourg 1.

Yes really. The best thing for English football would be for him to go back over the border and keep going as far as John O’Groats. As far away as possible, but I suspect his trial period in the role of the new Trevor Kettle is being considered a very successful one and he’ll get the gig permanently.

It wasn’t plain sailing in seeing the game out with this reduced lead with Joe Powell smashing a free-kick against our crossbar. A free-kick we probably thought shouldn’t have been given anyway.

The whole affair almost had a feel to it that said a late equaliser was scripted but it wasn’t and Burton got exactly what they deserved. Nowt.

For the most part in this our defence wasn’t tested at all. It’s great that we can rely on Mous to come in in a back three and do a good job with his experience, but what does that say about where we’re at with injuries, recruitment and youngsters coming through? Stuart Findlay and Ciaron Brown were steady. I particularly like the latter and think he is a fantastic asset but one horrible slice presented Burton with a needless corner.

In midfield Marcus McGuane didn’t show up as well as he has done in recent games and the more I see of Lewis Bate I’m afraid I just keep thinking too little and light-weight. He reminds me of Jack Payne in that regard.

For me Brannagan was our best player. Four league goals already this season plus one each in the Carabao Cup and Football League Trophy. I wonder what his market value is now compared to that at the time Blackpool tried to tempt him away.

Henry is performing steadily at the moment.

I honestly still can’t make my mind up about Joseph. He doesn’t turn 21 until next week and is obviously still learning his trade. Two league goals from three starts is a good return but I can’t detect anything special and there are times when I’d like to see more brute force up top but that’s not our way. With Taylor out for about a month KJ has got a fair old work-load ahead of him. Good luck to the lad.

This win gives us three on the bounce in all competitions with nine scored and only two let in so that is a positives to take forward.

As is the fact that we’re up to 11^th just three points off a play-off slot. Above Charlton. Level with Barnsley on points and just one point behind Derby and Bolton. However I have not rated the teams we’ve played thus far except for the Rams. That said Cambridge, who we beat 1-0 at home, are fifth. In the past I’ve often argued what an excellent product L1 football is but perhaps I’ve over-estimated it this season. At the moment it’s that thought that is giving me a bit more hope than I would otherwise have because I don’t think we’re anywhere near the teams that have got automatic promotion from tier 3 over the last few years.

They never used to travel in numbers anyway but this lot must know how bad their team is