FAN’S VIEW: 2025/26 – WHAT’S AHEAD?

Pre-season Friendlies…

…are not something I get very excited about although I am interested to know which players the manager is picking and how new additions fit in. I’ve been to Dublin and Glasgow in recent years but won’t venture much further afield. I have great admiration for those of our fans that went to Asia. You’re way more adventurous than I.

The Bristol Rovers game had no appeal. No disrespect to the Gas but we’ve played them 18 times competitively in the last ten years. (There is now though a gap of two divisions between us).

Foreign opposition on our turf, now that was more like it. I went to both.

The 25/26 League Campaign

This is the real thing.

I’d love it if we could improve on our 53 points and 17^th position of last season but I’m going to take the approach that I did a year ago and try and identify three teams that look like they have a good chance of finishing below us. Then I only had a list of one. Agent Rooney did the job required at Plymouth. He got the sack on 31 December but enough damage had already been done.

This time I’ll start with Sheffield Wednesday. I don’t wish ill on any football club – or perhaps deep down I do when it comes to some – each have fans that are as dedicated to their cause as we are to ours. When things go wrong, we can feel their pain from afar but that’s the heart and the understanding of what they’re going through having had very tough times ourselves. The head, however, tells our hands to start rubbing themselves together in glee when a rival is clearly in trouble.

Dejphon Chansiri, the owner of the Owls, has had cash flow problems for quite some time and it has got worse. HMRC payments were delayed in 2023 and 2024 and now players, coaches and staff are being paid late. Or is it not all? The club has been hit with a ban on spending money on transfers until January 2027. Chansiri for a while has not had the resources to fund and invest in the club he has owned for a decade. He needs to sell but has rejected bids from an American consortium presumably wanting more than they are willing to pay. Hillsborough is owned by a company called Sheffield 3 Limited, which is controlled by Chansiri so any new owners wouldn’t be getting a lot for their money. Even if he were to sell there’s no guarantee new owners would be well placed to take the club forward. Their pre-season preparation can’t have been easy.  

There was a fear that their fixture on Saturday at Leicester would not go ahead. Wednesday are down to 15 professionals and July wages have not been paid. They refused to play a planned friendly against Burnley last weekend but have now said they will turn out against the Foxes.

So, any others? I was at Newton Abbott races earlier this month and got chatting to a couple of guys in Hull City shirts as you do. I mentioned looking for three to finish below us and said at the moment I’d only pencilled in Wednesday then said “who else?” Immediately they came back “us, we’re in a mess”.  Their plight had escaped me. Hull have appealed against a transfer embargo they have been placed under that means they would not be able to pay a fee for a player until January 2027. That appeal is to be heard by an independent panel on 6 August. Concerns over the club’s finances arose after they were late making transfer payments to Aston Villa for the loan of winger Louie Barry last season. That debt has now been settled but the delay was too long for the English Football League. It wasn’t just this, they have also failed to make outstanding payments to Man City for Finley Burns and there have been delays in paying a supplier. Keiran Maguire from the “Price of Football” podcast thinks their situation, whilst not ideal, is not disastrous and that “It is fair to say that Sheffield Wednesday are closer to administration than Hull City are”.

We finished above Hull last season anyway so I’ll note them down too as their situation obviously has not improved and fans (even though there was only two of them in this instance) usually have a good feel as to what is going on at their club.

Those two Tigers threw in a third club: Leicester City. They’re in a very different situation to Hull and Wednesday. After nine seasons in the Premier League, including being champions in 2015/16 and winning the FA Cup in 20/21, they’re now back in the Championship for the second time in three years. In 2023 they changed their financial year end from 30 May to 30 June by which time they had transferred their Premier League place to newly promoted Luton.  This meant that they were able to appeal successfully against a Premier League charge that they had breached (PSR) rules, which limits losses to £105m over a three-year period as they were no longer bound by Premier League rules. The EFL which is a separate entity with different rules was not in a position to charge them with anything.

I do not think that Leicester will finish below us.

What I do think is that we’ll pick up more points away than we did last season. Only two teams got fewer than we did, relegated Argyle and our visitors for the opener, Pompey. Not so sure whether we’ll improve on our return at the Kassam. Last campaign we were joint 13^th best, just about mid-table form, and not much worse than what was achieved by Blackburn and Millwall, the two teams just outside the play-off slots.

To state the obvious, as I often do, where we finish depends on how good the opposition are and how good we are. Nothing stays the same by any means from season to season. Six teams leave the Championship to be replaced by different opposition, that is 25% churn. Squads change significantly before we all “go again”.

At the bottom end along with Argyle we lost Luton, who slipped straight through from the Premier League, and Cardiff. Their replacements are Birmingham, Wrexham and Charlton. The first two will be much stiffer opponents but the Addicks may find it difficult. Southampton and Ipswich accompanied Leicester in the drop to replace Leeds, Burnley and Sunderland. I wouldn’t argue this change has strengthened the Championship but neither has it weakened it much. The Saints are favourites for promotion (5/4) and the Tractor Boys second favourites (7/4).    

In our six games last season against the promoted teams we failed to score in five of them and only picked up three points in total and that was from the penultimate game at home against Sunderland who knew by then they’d finish fourth. I’ll be mightily annoyed if we do worse against their replacements.

Other interesting odds for promotion are (4^th favourites) Birmingham (21/10), and Leicester (9/2) only joint fifth favourites.

At the other end of the table the odds for the drop are reading up from the bottom, Sheff Wed (4/11), Oxford (27/10), Charlton and Hull (3/1), PNE (9/2), QPR (9/2), Pompey (5/1), Blackburn (11/2), Derby (6/1), Stoke and Swansea (7/1) and then surprisingly – or perhaps not – Leicester at 9/1.

All pretty tight then and the punters don’t know where to put their money. I think our odds should be more generous to be honest.

We do come across as a very small fish in a rather large pond. Based on the size of our current ground, yes. Based on our recent history, yes. But what about wages? I suspect last year and this we’re in the bottom half dozen or so Championship payers but think there won’t be much in it and quite possibly we won’t have had the lowest budget. (All guess work of course). For this we have to be very grateful to our owners whatever some might think about some of the things that have gone on behind the scenes. A topic I may, or may not, dip into as the season progresses.

It’s not just about having the money though, it’s how wisely it is spent on transfer fees and wages. Look at Manchester United in recent years. Talk about punching below your weight and spaffing it up against the wall. They’ve been champions at that.

I had a discussion with my son a few weeks ago on where we needed to improve. His opinion was that we weren’t terrible in any area of the pitch and that fitted in with my thinking. On an imaginary blank piece of paper, I drew a line representing the “average” Championship player (even though I know no such person exists) and then envisaged where our squad of last season fitted. I had many just below that line. So, my thinking was that we needed to push closer to that line and beyond.

Having seen what business we’ve done and having attended the two friendlies against Spanish second tier opponents my initial conclusion is that we’ve got a better squad now than we had last time around. Better probably equals stronger but physical strength and being a skilful footballer don’t necessarily go hand in hand. A few years back overall we looked small and light-weight and often got a bit bullied. That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. We’re building a bigger more robust outfit that has a lot of aerial threat from corners and free-kicks. It has mostly been defenders providing this threat but with the acquisition of forward Nik Prelec that could change. Gary Rowett has called him a “quick and powerful presence” and Ed Waldron has noted his “physicality”. Hopefully he’s good in the air because if Stan Mills gets crosses in as he did against Leganes and Malaga there should be plenty to feed off.

Brian De Keersmaecker looks a real competitor and Brodie Spencer a defender with considerable skill. Will Lankshear has signed as I type this.

Throw in Jack Currie after his successful loan at Orient and the fact that Matt Phillips and Tom Bradshaw look fitter than they did last season and I’m getting a tiny bit optimistic. And that’s without giving consideration to the players that are currently out injured. Ciaron Brown, supporters’ and players’ player of the year.  Przemyslaw Placheta, who featured a lot when fit. Ole Romeny, a player who for me the jury is still out. Although chicken feed for some, what we paid for him was big money for us. We’ve not seen a lot of him. I suspect we all think there’s a bit of an Indonesian thing going on here. Last season the Dutchman scored three goals for the Indonesian national team, three for Utrecht and just one for us in seven starts and seven appearances off the bench. And now of course he seems well and truly crocked and likely out for a considerable period.  Those who attended the Indonesian President’s Cup games in person or watched the live stream have commented on the thuggish behaviour of some of our opponents with possibly career threatening challenges going in but hey, it’s that Indonesian thing again and I can understand why we had to play in this competition. I can also understand why Gary Rowett wasn’t fully happy with this travel across the world and what resulted. I shouldn’t think he cared less about the 2-1 defeat to Port FC but was just relieved that no-one else ended up as Romeny had.

Biggest Day in the Club’s History?

There in no way can be a definitive answer to such a question. It will to a large extent depend on the age of the fan and the era they lived/are living in plus very much the here and now for those of us lucky enough to be watching the Mighty Yellows back in the Championship.

Being voted into the Football League in 1962?

The day we got promoted to the top flight in 1985?

Winning the Milk Cup in 1986?

The day the City Council voted to allow Firoz Kassam’s development at Minchery Farm? (Without that it was almost impossible to see Oxford United having a future as a professional football club) 

Getting back into the Football League in 2010?

And the latest candidate – 14/08/25. Decision day at Cherwell District Council regarding the planning application for the new ground at the Triangle.

I’ll restrain myself on this subject (well to a certain extent, but not totally), but needless to say the whole future of the football club rests on this. They’ve bent over backwards to accommodate demands. They were mucked about regarding Stratfield Brake when someone somewhere knew there was a lease signed with no break clause. Broken it could have been though if both parties agreed. That was never going to happen with KPC under Ian Middleton’s control. The Triangle is very much second prize. Friends of Stratfield Brake then became in all but name Friends of the Triangle. No name change though. That would have made it look like the agenda was just an anti-Oxford United one. Surely not.

The date for this crucial decision has been set a number of times only for it to be put back. Deadlines have been set, then ignored. The cut off for submissions had been reached once more then we got the Natural England ancient woodland issue. Wonder who brought this up at such a late date? Can’t have been delaying tactics, can it?

https://www.friendsofstratfieldbrake.org/2025/07/20/natural-england-confirms-land-next-to-triangle-is-ancient-woodland

FoSB then got a little confused by publishing this on 20 July with the headline “Natural England confirms land next to Triangle is “Ancient Woodland””. Included in the text is the following, “We believe that Natural England’s decision means the stadium proposal cannot go ahead in its current form”.

It didn’t take long for Natural England to confirm that the definition of “ancient woodland” was not met.

What next? Anything?

Fingers crossed.

As a member of FOUL I remember meeting Mike Woodin, leader of the Green Group on Oxford City Council, when the club was close to disappearing. We had sensible, meaningful and respectful conversations. He understood us, we understood him. Nice man who sadly died of cancer 21 years ago. He now has a street bearing his name in Oxford.

Having made his acquaintance, I warmed to the Green Party. Now, although my views on recycling, sustainability and looking after the planet in general have not changed, I would not go anywhere near them.

For the Pompey game I’m planning on travelling by bus into the centre of Oxford then walking up the river to Sandford Lock taking in nature and a couple of pints as I go.