FAN’S VIEW: 24/25 – No.23: SHEFFIELD WEDNESDAY AT HOME

OXFORD UNITED 1 SHEFFIELD WEDNESDAY 3

The intention is to make to make this a short one. (No promises though).

I’m finding it all very boring having to keep saying the same thing over and over. Lacking Championship quality as a team and individually. Playing too slowly. Poorer control and technique than the opposition. Always making more mistakes than the opposition.

This in no way means I’ve turned on my team, the manager or the owners. To use that over used phrase, “it is what it is.”  We realistically always knew it was going to be a long hard slog. I was prepared for that but now I see an even more difficult road ahead than I had anticipated back in August.

Football has changed so much over the last forty years with the gap in wealth between the big and small clubs having grown at such an alarming rate that I genuinely wonder if the challenge for us to now remain in the Championship is bigger than it was to remain in the top flight back in the 80s.

Perhaps that’s too simplistic with Bournemouth and Brentford having established themselves in the Premier League. Not that long ago it could be argued that we were a bigger football club than these two.

Nevertheless at the moment I feel it’s like we’re a tiny fish in a very large pond unable to survive against much bigger and healthier predators.

I’m getting very little enjoyment watching OUFC at present. That wouldn’t by any means be the first time in my nearly 60 years of following the club that I’ve felt this way. It comes with the territory. But how much better to be feeling like this in the Championship having just been beaten by a club as large as Sheffield Wednesday than in the Conference by a village team like Histon.

At the start of the season it was all new to us, a novelty, and an unexpected delight. We won our first three home games. The sun was shining, or at least that’s how I now picture it all, and we played with belief and looked defensively solid. Having done this once does that mean we could go on another similar home run? Or was it just that early boost many promoted teams have at the start as they’re still riding high on the success of the previous campaign. Once that’s gone it’s gone. Other ways have to be found. We have not found one yet. And being brutally honest we’ve never found a way at all away from home.

The first half here was fairly even and my half time one sentence summing up of our performance was “we’ve been a lot better than we have recently”. Mind you that’s a fairly low bar and I’ll be honest in saying that I thought the visitors were that bit better quality wise than we were. Thirty five year old Barry Bannan, who has been an Owl for over nine years, was the one pulling the strings. He must have had more touches than anyone else in this match. He points, he organises, he keeps the ball, he passes short and simple and also long and incisively. Is man marking not a thing in modern football? Too old school and not in keeping with all this possession football? I’d have thought giving it a go in this instance would have been worthwhile to see if we could have nullified Bannan. Achieve that and our chances would have increased. But do we have a player in our ranks capable of being a Nobby Stiles. (Yes, that is going back isn’t it? Look him up kids.)

A mate thinks Bannan is useless when Wednesday are not in possession. Doing what he currently does and doesn’t do I’d want him in my team. We’ve got no equivalent.

I’ll freeze the above in time. It was all written before the news came through.

Photo, Steve Daniels

I was sat in the White Hart in Bicester after being a marshal for the Santa fun run. Having a couple of pints of Guinness (it’s the thing to do in that establishment) and chat in very good company when the news came through. Des gone. WTF was my initial reaction. Unbelievable. The guy probably had the weakest hand in the Championship dealt to him. Pushed or walked? We don’t really know although we can each have a good guess. I’m on his side. But now I have to move on. I’m an Oxford United supporter. Players come and players go. Managers come and managers go. But loyal fans like me remain forever. But very much struggling to get my head round it all. If it was a sacking do the board have a clue what they are doing? They’re not football people. (I am 100% behind them in what their ambitions are by the way– top 30 club in the country.) But talk is easy. We all spout nonsense at times in our lives.

New manager lined up? Not a clue. Do the board have a clue? Possibly, possibly not.

Back to the game. (However moving forward does this have any relevance anymore?)

Our goal came from a corner that Cameron Brannagan neatly dinked back into the box after it was only half cleared. An Elliott Moore flick on (how many times do we say that) and an opportunistic finish from Greg Leigh. Poor defending from Wednesday?

My thinking is now defend like ****.

But we’re weak in all areas of the pitch defence, midfield and attack. And that’s made even more brittle by a lack of confidence. 

We’ve now lost 11 league games this season. Six of the first seven were just by a single goal margin and the other at Sunderland being a 2-0 defeat. Of the last four losses including this one the margins have been four, three, two and two which has seen our respectable goal difference shot to pieces.

In our discussion on the journey home from QPR when we agreed that we couldn’t see where our next win was coming from we also were all of the view that the same could be said of a clean sheet. Our defensive solidarity seems long gone.

Midfield is the area I’ve overheard most talk of. Its, “we’re just not good enough” or “we’ve not got a midfield.”

And up front we all know we’ve not got a strike force worthy of the name.

Truth is we’re lacking all over.

The equaliser came when we just didn’t defend a corner. All this we’re one of the best Championship teams at defending these set pieces was meaningless here. Dane Scarlett jumped but could only help the ball along the trajectory it was already taking. Windass (Josh), 1-1.

And that was it. The fragility showed. We could have been a couple up at the break but instead we’d been pegged back.

Idris El Mizouni had a shot which brought a decent but fairly routine save from James Beadle. Owen Dale unmarked to his left showed his frustration. A pass instead of a shot and our chances of scoring would have been higher. But that’s not where we’re at currently. This was before the equaliser.

After we’d been pegged back a superb raking pass from Ruben Rodrigues found Dale whose effort was blocked by Beadle as he rushed from his goal. Top finishers are rare but if we’d had one in this situation a neat chip might have seen our second goal go in.

Dale though was one of our better players. He had noticeable enthusiasm and energy.

Scarlett too had missed a chance from a fairly similar position. Perhaps it was asking too much to have expected him to have scored it but we’re just not clinical. I feel for our Tottenham loanee. It looks like he is carrying a weight on his shoulders. Not quite quick enough or sharp enough. Is it possible to try too hard and then make it appear that you’re not trying hard enough?  Fair play to the lad for tracking all the way back when he lost the ball.

Once Wednesday scored any belief we had ebbed away somewhat and when they went a goal ahead four minutes into the second half it disappeared completely.

This was another gift. Call it bad luck if it makes you feel better. I’m not going to do so. After a bit of scrappy midfield play the visitors got the ball and with acres of space on their right were able to get a cross in unchallenged. Moore’s header ricocheted off Brannagan and produced the most inviting of gifts to Jamal Lowe who gratefully accepted the easy chance.

Twelve minutes later we were two adrift. This goal summed up how lacking we are in getting players in the right areas of the pitch at the right time. We’d broken up a Wednesday attack quite easily and Moore had the ball at the back. He looked to play it forward to his right where there was green grass a plenty. But not a bloody yellow shirt in sight. So he rightly turned backwards and passed to his keeper. Then Cummin to Brown who played high and long down the wing. A Wednesday head won the ball, of course it did. Blue and white now came forward. Bannan was involved, of course he was. His pass to Michael Smith was touched back to Djeidi Gassama who finished first time with unerring accuracy from outside the box. Call me a traitor if you like but it was a goal I admired to such an extent that I clapped its quality. A goal I hated too, naturally. Kind of meaningless because I never thought we’d get a second anyway even when we were just one behind.

So where do we go from here? Have the club got someone lined up? If not then why did they sack Des? Or did they actually sack him? Probably. He didn’t sound like a broken man who wanted relief from the stress in his post-match interview on Radio Oxford. That said clips of him on the touch line show a man under pressure. Our current record is shockingly awful. Yet, and this cannot go on forever, we’re still not in the bottom three. Elland Road next week peeps. So, have a guess. I doubt any manager in the world would take us there with any confidence of getting even just a point.

Not long to the transfer window opening again. Will there be money to spend? If so how will that sit with the EFL’s P&S rules? And who will be spending it?

This all feels very strange. I’ve never known our football club previously getting rid of a manager that the vast majority of the fan base were still fully behind. Early on I wasn’t sure at all about Des but then became a big fan. He’s had a poor hand to play with this season. But I don’t know how much of that is down to him. People keep saying we’ve got a very small budget but until the accounts for this season come out we won’t know for sure. There’s a lot of guess work going on. And how involved was he in the recruitment process?  Did we spend wisely on transfer fees, loan signings and contracts? At present it doesn’t look like it.

Football is a results business there’s no getting away from that. Much as many will want to vent their anger in some direction the objective for OUFC remains the same – survival in the Championship. So as ever we’ve got to get behind whoever fills the role be it on an interim or full-time basis and continue to back the players the best we can whilst remembering where the money to keep the club going is coming from.