I knew I’d been to the Bet 365 (“Britannia” as it was then) Stadium before but had no recollection of the place or when. My record keeping of games attended is nowhere near as comprehensive as Womble’s used to be. He took a little book to every game and noted the line-ups and scores as far as I can recall. Still miss him and always will.
I do have some sketchy notes scribbled in a diary though and can just about read my writing. Rage Online informs that we’ve played three league games at this venue.
The first was in their first season there having played their last game at the Victoria ground on 4 May 1997. It was a Tuesday night fixture on 4 Nov that year. Apparently I’d booked the afternoon off work but not the morning. However I was off in the morning too – sick. Hit by a bug the previous night. Those were the days when kaolin and morphine was freely available to purchase with no questions asked. Got myself fit enough to see a 0-0 draw in front of a crowd of 8,423. No idea how I travelled or who I travelled with.
Oxford have played there twice since but I didn’t attend. On 7/8/99 as Steve Anthrobus was getting one of our two goals in a 2-1 win watched by 10,193 I was having my car written off driving to catch a ferry in France. Bit of a nightmare, that. The Bus made 38 league starts for us and came on 17 times. Goals scored three. Prolific he was not.
The last time we visited was for another mid-week fixture. Wednesday 13 Sept 2000 saw a 4-0 defeat with 9,600 looking on. I noted that there was a petrol crisis. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t go. Or was it because we were utter shite that season? We finished bottom of the 2nd Division (now League 1) with 27 points from 46 games, a goal difference of minus 47 and 26 points from safety. Luton and Swansea went down with us. I have mostly bad memories of the National league that won’t go away but I’d forgotten how stinking and rotten the dark days of our plummet out of the football league under Firoz Kassam were. It’s when I look back at the record books that it all comes back to me.
How times have changed though. Compare and contrast the owner then and the owners now. Plus this game was in the tier above that 2000 hammering. There’s no comparison to be had between the players and team we had then and what we have now. And the crowd too – football has taken off since then, elevated by the Premier League (whether we like it or not) which has pulled the standard below up too. With the riches on offer attracting so many top foreign players to the PL many who would otherwise be operating at that level ply their trade in the Championship.
The gate was 22,911 for this including 2,010 following United. That is some away support given the 12:30 kick-off and the game being live on Sky. There was vocal backing throughout but I just wish slightly more was aimed at support for the team as opposed to insulting the opposition. I’m a grumpy old man I know that, it’s just what younger generations do I suppose. “Stoke’s a shithole, I wanna go home” is rather tiresome for me. There was though some good banter between the two sets of fans. We had the orchestrated raising of his shirt to show his above average sized belly by a home fan near the no man’s land to our right. “Fatty loves the Oxford.” He and his mates were laughing not getting all agitated and angry. On one of the Stoke City vlogs recorded during the game, behind the vlogger is a young kid copying the behaviour. He’s tiny bless him and about a quarter of the weight of the person he was imitating.
I detected a kind of weariness amongst the home fans. After 10 consecutive seasons in the Premier League they were relegated in 2017/18 and in every season since, other than the first, they’ve finished in the bottom half of the Championship. They’ve probably got rather bored with it all and it isn’t as if the football they are playing is scintillating. This wasn’t the most entertaining game we’ve been involved in this season but being an evenly matched contest it still demanded my full attention from start to finish. Neither side had that extra spark or top finisher to be able to take all three points. A draw was a fair result but on quality of chances we marginally edged it. Obviously if a team does not put those chances away it will not win and doesn’t deserve to do so.
Taking an away point is rarely a bad thing and the higher up the pyramid we are the more precious such a point is. Perhaps some will be a little disappointed that we didn’t beat a team below us in the table. Their form is terrible: one win in 15. Or is it? One defeat in five before our visit and that includes a home victory over Sunderland 1-0 and drawing 0-0 at Burnley.
It’s now four clean sheets in our last seven games which tells that our defence is doing a fine job, even if Peter Kioso did have a dodgy game against the Potters. Every player will have a drop off in form from time to time and mates observed that he was up against the hosts’ best player.
Przemyslaw Placheta as usual was a potent threat. If he’d not got injured early on this season I wonder if results would have been somewhat different and we would not now have Gary Rowett as our manager. Early on we built an attack and it looked as if Tom Bradshaw was going to get to the ball first but such is PP’s speed it was he who took control, setting up Cameron Brannagan for two shots. The first was blocked, the second just pushed round the post by keeper Viktor Johansson, a £750k purchase from Rotherham.
After Michal Helik had played a pass to him at the back, Kioso passed it square straight to Andrew Moran. The alert and expertly positioned Jamie Cumming came to our rescue. Kioso acknowledged his error. I like that.
Junior Tchamadeu had the weakest of penalty appeals when he was totally playing for it and went down as is said “way too easily”. Perhaps one in 20 refs might fall for it but Farai Hallam wasn’t for being tricked. I was quite impressed with his performance.
Just before the break Greg Leigh hit a tight angled low hard shot from outside the box that nearly went in at the near post. It had some bend on it but Johansson kept it out at the expense of a corner.
Early in the second half Siriki Dembele did well to set up Bradshaw who had shown really clever movement. It was a decent chance which was blocked by Johansson who came rushing out of his goal. The effort needed toeing over the keeper with a bit of height on it. If it had been Mark Harris not converting this we may have been a little more critical perhaps.
Stoke had another penalty appeal which was again waved away. This one I thought had more merit than the first. Kioso’s push was a clumsy one.
Cumming had to go down swiftly again to stop an Enda Stevens shot. It was another very good save but he couldn’t get the ball far away from his goal. Leigh was on hand to do the necessary.
The only real talking point coming out of this game, which won’t live long in the memory, involved our record signing after he’d come on in the 79th minute. Before then though Placheta had, in a matter of minutes, given the ball away on the half way line with a careless pass setting up a Stoke attack before sending Harris away after winning back possession. I thought Sparky’s control was poor and instead of being able to get a shot away he was robbed. My initial thoughts were if only we’d started with him and brought Bradshaw on instead of vice versa we would have had a better chance of getting the benefit. Unfair thinking probably.
Ole Romeny didn’t have much time to show us what he can do but boy did he have a chance to announce his arrival with a bang. I’ve been watching a lot of Championship football on TV and bad goalkeeping errors seem to have got more frequent than earlier on in the season. Johansson coming out of his goal to the touch line was a crazy decision but to then not play the ball hoping that it would run out of play was even more barking. Romeny at first had hesitated but then sensed an opportunity. Johansson’s shielding wasn’t enough to stop Romeny taking possession on the touch line (the whole of the ball, whole of the line) five yards from the by-line. With his fourth touch Romeny fired from a tight angle at the open goal. It was all split second stuff but a little more calmness and less power on the shot would likely have seen the ball in the net instead of hitting the bar. If only his second and third touch had moved the ball a few yards back towards our goal he would have had a bigger target to aim at. Not the cleverest bit of play I’ve ever seen but it’s easy from the stands and sat here watching the replay over and over. Don’t know how many players would have won the ball in these circumstances in the first place either.
Not having been here for such a long time we didn’t know the lie of the land and with the early kick-off no time to have a good wander around exploring local watering holes. Parking is a challenge too and many like us opted for the Longton Rugby club. They charge a fiver. We were there by 9:30 and were not the first from Oxford to have parked up. No one was taking money. After waiting a short time we walked into the club house and a fiver was handed over to a bloke who was clearly a rugby player or ex-player. By the time we left to walk to the ground which took 15-20 mins there must have been about 100 cars parked up. A nice little earner for a rugby club of that size.
They weren’t serving beer until 10 o’clock (ish). Coffee was cheap. I’d just about say cheap and cheerful is a good description of what was on offer. You’re not going to get a lot of flavour for your money or high quality product in a burger bun at £2 a time. I felt obliged to try the local speciality, oatcakes. Cheese and sausage. £3.50. Ticked off and I’ll leave it at that. They did have one real ale on hand pump, described by my mate as “quality very mediocre” but it was cheap. £7.50 for two and a half pints. Think it cost me a bit more than that though. The only time I ever use cash now is for walking football subs, when I go horse racing and paying the driver of the day petrol money for away games. In order to get the right denominations for the latter I handed over a twenty pound note at the bar. Not used to such transactions I didn’t check my change before I walked away. Pretty sure I was £5 light. But hey ho!
Getting out from here after the game was the worst experience so far this season. Not back in Bicester until 6:15 ish. I suspect we’ll be making different arrangements next season if we come back to Stoke and if the kick off time is kinder.
It’s still so tight at the bottom. Stoke are now 20th two points above Derby who are in the last relegation slot. We’re 16th seven points better off than Stoke. If we’d been beaten that gap would be just four points. If you can’t win it’s so important not to get beaten. That objective was achieved as was the continuation of the unbeaten run under Gary Rowett. This is some achievement.
Best relegation odds now available are Plymouth 1/33 (they did draw at Sunderland), Pompey 6/4 (next two fixtures against Burnley and Sheffield United), Luton 7/4 (one point from their last seven games), Derby 9/4 (lost their last six games), Stoke 11/4 and Oxford along with Cardiff – unbeaten in eight – and Hull – 3-0 winners at Bramall Lane – at 5/1. There’s then a big jump to Swansea at 25/1. A strange one that as the Swans have two fewer points than us.
Nothing yet is a given. All runs good and bad come to an end. Usually.
And finally a big compliment to SCFC for their customer service. On opening the envelope containing an away match ticket one of our party discovered they’d brought the one for a different fixture, the Stoke ticket still in Oxfordshire. All sorted a few minutes later after a call to the Stoke ticket office. Turns out Ticketmaster does have its advantages. Fan no. given and another ticket issued for collection at the ground. I was impressed.
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another fine mash from ox9encoding