FAN’S VIEW 23/24 – NO.1

LEAGUE ONE: CAMBRIDGE UNITED 2 OXFORD UNITED 0

The walk to the ground. The anticipation. The excitement. It’s a brand new season. Hope springs eternal.

Last season was awful but the past is the past albeit recorded in the history books so can’t be forgotten. With Karl Robinson having lost the plot at the back end of the 21/22 campaign it seemed madness by the owners to have left him at the helm for so long thereafter. Seven defeats in eight games became enough is enough even for them. A point which almost every at the coal face Oxford fan had reached way before then.

To be fair to Karl he left with a win percentage of 41 and had got us into the play-offs twice but it’s the direction of travel which tells all.

Liam Manning came in on 11 March. I didn’t think he was the man for the job. That job being to create a hard to beat, scrapping, nastier, physical team to get enough points to ensure L1 survival.  However I also thought that if he did keep us up – which obviously happened thanks to what he got out of the mess left by Robbo alongside the rank awfulness of so many teams operating at the bottom of the table – then as a progressive young coach we’d be well set for this season. His win percentage at MK Dons was 48%.

That optimism was tempered by my feeling that he got MK to play out from the back way too much. I recall in two games against them when we pressed at speed, which isn’t something we do as a matter of course, won the ball and scored. I’d like to think he has seen the light or more accurately the need for darkness on occasion. Whatever one’s footballing principles there’s always the need for pragmatism to be introduced from time to time. In the ten games he was in charge of us in 22/23 the nine points we gathered was enough and I didn’t notice this over playing in risky areas and welcomed the fact that clean sheets started to arrive.

So the hope began to build. Manning will have had a plan for 23/24. He identified players he wanted in and out. Movement happened early on. I didn’t watch any of our pre-season friendlies but assumed the players he was recruiting were improvements on those moved on.

Everyone was getting excited knowing there was no way the nine months ahead could be worse than the previous August to April joyless toil. After all the defence had been sorted already and now improved with the return of Jordan Thorniley and recruitment of a bright young goalkeeper.

One of the biggest questions that remained was the lack of an out and out goal-scorer. That 20 goal a season man. Same debate every season and they’re always like gold dust. Last season just five players made it to that mark or above in L1. If a club can’t get such a man, and the chances are they won’t be able to, then it is important that others contribute significantly in the scoring charts. Do we have these men in our ranks?

For me though knowing that elusive top goal-scorer will remain elusive, another very sensible route to go down is to have a big tall strong commanding centre-forward in your squad. One that gives the centre-halves a real battle, gets on the end of corners and free-kicks, heads goalwards, gets flick-ons and can hold the ball up and bring others into play. Not asking much am I?

Back to the pre-season hope: Oxford United 5 QPR 0. I watched the goals on You Tube and heard comment that we could have had more. Wow! However, as any sensible observer of the beautiful, and not so beautiful, game will know a friendly against a Championship team on our own patch is a very different scenario to an away league game against the likes of Cambridge United. I recognised that as a big caveat. I had the home side down as playing a L1/L2 robust style with more long balls than the average team at this level will produce. As ever I’m not meaning that in a disrespectful way. Against such sides you have to win the right to play your football by first coming out on top in the battle as every ball is contested full bloodedly. That’s all about understanding this necessary pragmatic side to the game, instilling that in the team and ensuring they deliver that when necessary.

Nevertheless I travelled with so much positivity it was ridiculous.

And then …….. REALITY. Assessing this performance I don’t think I could give it any more than 3 out of 10. As one shrewd observer commented, if someone hadn’t realised we’d had a change of manager and a lot of personnel, they’d have thought this was a continuation of the last knockings of the Robbo era.

Pre-match in the music themed Geldart and its glass piano over a fine pint of Ghost Ship a Cambridge fan said we’re both favourites to go down by way of starting conversation. Not us I said we’re much stronger than last season. (Glad I wasn’t going back there afterwards to have to explain myself). He said they were too, in defence and midfield but wasn’t sure about up top.

A quick aside for drinkers of real cider out there who may be in the Cambridge area in the not too distant future. The Geldart sells “Simons” cider. As driver on the day I didn’t partake as it is 6%.  I’ll almost certainly never get the chance to. It is multi-award winning, the man behind it being Simon Gibson. Sadly Simon passed away in March and when it’s gone it’s gone. His wife is selling his cider making equipment.  During lockdown he played a key role in a local CAMRA online beer festival producing mixed cider boxes and guiding people through an extended online tasting session. Sounds like my sort of character.

Back to the football. Although on reflection perhaps I’d rather have drowned in real cider instead. (Can’t call it scrumpy because this is not from the South West).

All the faults that were there previously were back – and some – and laughing in our faces. How cruel is that given this was supposed to be the start of a positive new epoch?

70% possession and 672 passes to Cambridge’s 287. Our passing accuracy being 85% theirs 67%. And in the opponents half we were at 67% and they were at 55%. But they had double our shots on target, six to three and obviously the only stats that really matter are goals for and against.

Not one of our new outfield starters impressed me.

Josh McEachran was such a prodigious talent in his teenage years. I genuinely thought a future England player. I know he keeps the ball but this was all backwards, sideways, backwards stuff. Fine when a team needs to get a foothold or is protecting a lead but we were 2-0 down before half an hour had gone. I didn’t notice him getting around the pitch either. I can only assume that he’s playing to his manager’s instructions and that his manager really rates him based on them being together at MK. Josh M does not bring goals. He’s started 187 professional league games and come on as sub 84 times including in the Eredivisie. In all those games he’s scored just once getting Brentford’s goal in a 1-1 draw with Birmingham at Griffin Park in 2018. (Apologies if previously I’d told anyone he’d never scored. I was misinformed)

Our movement of the ball was painfully slow.

There was little movement in the final third and our goal threat was patently lacking.

Our full-backs never got going in an attacking sense and Ciaron Brown, who was your archetypal solid reliable at least 7 out of 10 guy week in week out last season, had his worst game in an Oxford shirt.

Tyler Goodrham, exciting last campaign, might as well not have been on the pitch here. He wasn’t getting any useful service though. The number of long cross-field high balls to him was embarrassing. They couldn’t have been easier for his marker to win in the air. Talk about easy – this may turn out to be the easiest game of football the Cambridge defence have all season.

I thought our brightest starter was Marcus Browne. We were most potent when the ball was at his feet. I’m not blaming him here for hanging onto it too long or running into blind alleys which he sometimes does. In this game there was nothing happening around him anyway.

Although I wasn’t happy when he was taken off on 72 minutes, there’s no denying that our changes improved us. Mark Harris accompanied Browne in the walk towards the bench with Billy Bodin and Gaitlin O’Donkor trotting the other way. Eleven minutes earlier Goodrham and McEachran had been replaced by Marcus McGuane and Stan Mills.

Now we looked like a bit more like a team that might get a goal. McGuane had energy, drove forward with the ball and made us set up our base camp much further up field than had been the case before his arrival. Mills gave us more down the right flank and Bodin played his part too but with young O’Donkor I really can’t see it I’m afraid.

A goal still didn’t arrive though. Our efforts to get one throughout the game were few. In the first half Cameron Brannagan put a free-kick over the bar without giving Jack Stevens in the Cambridge goal any cause for concern. Later in the half he did force a good save from Stevens after McEachran rolled the ball to him from another free-kick. In the second half he put a curling effort just wide after we’d actually played a bit of football. And later on Mills couldn’t quite properly get on the end of a Ruben Rodrigues ball into the box. Even as we made a better fist of it in the latter stages though, James Beadle was still called into action to prevent a humiliating three goal reverse.

The two that the home side did get came thus:

The first: Brown was robbed on the half-way line by James Brophy who fed Saikou Janneh. He was a threat down both flanks providing something we didn’t have. The shot he fired at goal from the angle of the area was kept out by Beadle’s arm but bobbled invitingly to Jack Lankester who put it away. Our keeper should probably have got the ball away from the danger zone.

The second: Stevens came out of his area to collect a hopeful and hopeless long ball from Browne. On receipt of Stevens’s side footed pass Janneh turned intelligently and, with a give and go which involved a neat back-heel from Lankester, was away down the wing. His cross was meat and drink for an old fashioned centre forward. Gassan Ahadme on loan from Ipswich was that man. He beat Brown in the air and headed home. The type of goal we never score. Ahadme gave Elliott Moore a torrid time all afternoon. He was good at what he did but I have to say he was aided and abetted by referee Sunny Sukhvir Gill in only his second season officiating in the EFL. Gill might have booked five in total – four from Cambridge and Rodrigues – but unlike Bobby Madley, referee in the previous evening’s live Championship game, didn’t appear to have embraced the league’s new clampdown directive. Ahadme was allowed to shirt pull with impunity.

Another moan directed at those in charge was that I thought the ball had gone out of play for this goal. I was stood directly looking down the touch line. Biased eyes yes but McEachran appealed for it. I don’t think the linesman was even looking.

When all said and done Cambridge deserved their win and we can have no complaints about the two goal margin. They were better than I expected.

The next game will be very different but as we know a cup run is a nice to have, not an essential. It’s all about the league. I’m now going to enter no shit Sherlock territory. There’s 45 games to go. This one could be a one off. However on this evidence we may have reason to worry that yet again we are not up to competing with teams that play like Cambridge do. Or that Manning can’t adapt to different styles of opponents and can only play one way.