The result sinks in (Photo: Steve Daniels)

There is a truism in football that’s as old as time itself: if Cameron Brannagan plays well, Oxford United play well; if he doesn’t, then United have a stinker. I’m sure you can all guess where I’m going with this.

We’re not down yet, although the apocryphal fat lady has just gone up a size and has just finished gargling her mouthwash. I was half thinking about delaying writing this until after tonight’s games: if Blackburn Rovers win at Sheffield United, then our rotund dame will have finished her aria – even a draw would leave us teetering on the knife’s edge of League One, while West Brom’s 3-0 win over an uninterested Watford last night means that even a points deduction is unlikely to be a realistic lifeline for an Oxford side that has taken its eye off the ball one time too many.

It wasn’t so much the defeat itself – although any loss at this stage of the season and with the relegation battle the way it is would certainly sting – as the manner of defeat. United were the proverbial rabbit in the headlights of impending disaster and seemed overwhelmed by the seriousness of their situation.

Wrexham weren’t all that, despite all their Hollywood financing. The win lifts them into the play-off places, thanks also to Hull’s inability to beat a Leicester side whose relegation was confirmed (see you again next season Foxes, probably).

However, for much of the game, despite a lot of huffing and puffing, Oxford failed to land a glove on them. They were set up all wrong from the very start. Jamie Donley, who had been under-achieving recently, was dropped (fair enough), but instead of, say, Myles Peart-Harris or his half brother Mark playing in that #10 role, the brief was given to the skipper Brannagan, whose best displays have always been in a slightly deeper position, where he is better able to dictate play.

This left another under-achieving player – MPH himself – wide on the left, where Aidomo Emakhu or Jeon Jin-Woo are more naturally gifted wingers. Indeed, Emakhu replaced Peart-Harris ten minutes into the second half and Oxford immediately looked more threatening down the left. In fact, it was Emakhu who created United’s best chance, his shot from the edge of the area a fairly comfortable save for Danny Ward down by his right post.

It’s an experiment that’s been tried before (albeit not by Matt Bloomfield) and it has never worked. Fair enough, try something different – the side has been too predictable too often – but once it becomes clear that it’s not working, change it. As it happens, Brannagan wasn’t moved further back until Donley came on, with just two minutes of normal time remaining.

The other disappointing things about the way the side was set up was with two defensive midfielders, in a must-win game. Fair enough, both Yunus Konak and Jamie McDonnell played really well and justified their inclusion in the side, but to have them both on the field automatically meant that United’s attacking threat wasn’t that much of a threat after all.

With MPH under-performing on the left, Stan Mills too often forced to drop deep to cover for Sam Long on the right, and Brannagan unsure whether to stick or twist, it left poor Will Lankshear up top on his own against Wrexham’s giant central defenders. Unsurprisingly, it was a totally ineffective front line for the U’s.

Clearly, a lot of United’s problems were self-inflicted: poor tactics from the outset, plus too many players (especially Brannagan) having off days.

It could have been different if the referee wasn’t a bottler though. As a former ref myself, I will almost always stick up for the man in the middle, even when it’s Sam Allison, as I can generally see where the decisions are coming from. However, there were two calls against Wrexham that I feel Matt Donohue got wrong: in the first half, Brannagan was blatantly knocked off the ball in the penalty area; anywhere else on the pitch and that’s a foul and, unless the rules have changed since I last reffed in 2017, the penalty area isn’t an exclusion zone for normal rules. Then in the second half, while attacking a corner, Ciaron Brown had his shirt pulled: not a slight tug that seems to be de rigeur these days; his shirt was pulled right off. How blatant can a foul be? Unfortunately, not blatant enough for Donohue.

However, these refereeing abominations aside, Oxford have been too poor and dropped too many points in too many games for their fate to be anything but their own dismal fault.

Should the inevitable happen and the U’s find themselves back in League One next season… No! I’m not writing the epitaph just yet, just like our portly diva hasn’t started her overture at the time of writing. Where there’s hope, there’s usually someone fooling themselves, but on this occasion I’ll allow a bit of straw-clutching, at least until the maths mean hope turns to hopeless, which is where the side has been for too much of the past campaign.

It could be worse, and it probably will be. Until then, keep on keeping on.

UTFO