There’s something mysterious about Ciaron Brown – he could have come from any era over the last 30 years. The man bun and goatee is part bass player of second string Madchester band, part early-2000s Darius Danesh, part fifth wheel in American singing quintet. 

He seems counter to the club in its current guise, he’s not the cunning discovery ready to be sold into the Championship at the earliest opportunity, he was a stopgap that seemed to just stop at the club.

I’m still disappointed that his call last season to turn potential into points by ‘speaking it into existence’ hasn’t become common parlance. I want him to become the club’s great philosopher. I’ve got visions of him in the canteen at the club wearing a roll neck jumper, reading selected works from Descarte or John-Paul Satre while smoking a Gaulois cigarette that everyone is too afraid to tell him to put out.

He’s undoubtedly the breakout star of the season; in the dogfight to find some kind of rhythm, he’s the one who consistently delivers a committed performance. Perhaps that’s why he seems slightly detached, uninhibited by the malaise that seems to affect others.

It’s been quite a week, the spot betting allegation levelled against him after the Arsenal game is an odd one. There are a lot of unknowns, of course, but if it’s true that a betting company priced him at 8-1 to get booked, that means for every eight games he’d play against Bukayo Saka – who he faced for much of the game – he’d be booked just once. He currently gets booked every five games playing against League One players. That implies it’s easier to play against Saka than in League One.

The booking itself looks innocuous, a clumsy meaningless challenge, he picks up the ball to buy himself a few seconds to get back into position. If that’s a deliberate attempt to get booked, it’s so subtle, you’ve got to admire his acting ability. It’s not like he drop-kicked a ballboy into the car park. I’d be more suspicious of the referee for deciding to show him the card.

If he was overpriced, it wouldn’t be surprising that it’d be picked up by betting types and shared, I can imagine even Brown’s friends highlighting the comedic value of suggesting that he’d have a relatively easy ride against Saka.

There’s also the allegation that Arsenal fans were seen celebrating the booking and there’s a picture of a betting slip with someone’s winnings on them. If you’re involved in something illegal, is it normal to broadcast it quite so openly?

Maybe it’s all this that meant he could play against Fleetwood with a clear conscience, that there are no smoking texts incriminating him because the irregularities really just stem from a bad calculation by one betting company. 

A ropey cheeseburger kept the Arsenal game in the news well into the week, so Fleetwood came as a bit of a surprise. So much so, only 3,132 fans bothered to attend, the match commentary was buffeted with winds and backed by an eerie silence from the stands, it was a day to stay at home.

The pattern seemed pretty standard, Simon Eastwood was both man of the match and at fault for the goal. We huffed and puffed and didn’t look like scoring, someone said we need a striker. Then Kyle Joseph appears like Lazarus, waltzes through the Fleetwood defence for the equaliser before things are handed over to Brown to scramble the winner in the last minute.

There’s a weird picture on the Oxford website of the celebrations; everyone is running towards someone, arms aloft, screaming, but their attention isn’t directed at Brown, the goalscorer is amongst the pack of players. It’s like he was inconsequential. Maybe he’s not there at all, he’s a kind of energy force around the club ready to pop up when needed and speak it into existence.