Both the recent David Beckham and Robbie Williams documentaries on Netflix choose to largely ignore their early lives. Rather than dwell on the obsessive focus needed for global fame; the failures, the dedication and the luck, they take a shortcut down the rat run back alley called ‘talent’ in order to get to the story they want to tell.

In the opening episode, we’re told that Beckham and Williams were born with a seemingly natural, fully-formed talent. No mention of Beckham’s borderline obsessive compulsive disorder – illustrated by a sequence when he appears to cook a single mushroom before cleaning down the entire outdoor camp kitchen he’s constructed in his garden. No mention of Williams’ rampant narcissism – his whole life seems to centre on failing to reconcile that while he wants to be an average Jim Morrison or Kurt Cobain, he is in fact an exceptional Norman Wisdom or Bruce Forsyth.

Both documentaries complete their origin story within the first twenty minutes of each four episode series. They were born with a seething, rampant talent, then they were successful. They’re hardly alone – at the start of Jay Z’s Black Album, the rapper hilariously managed to persuade his mum to record the story of his birth – “Weighing in at 10 pounds, four ounces, he was … the only one who didn’t give me any pain … that’s how I knew he was a special child.”

Yep, that chubby little monster just slipped out greased up in his own talent.

For Beckham and Williams, the convenient ‘talent’ explanation allows them to race to get to their narrative – the story they really want to tell. For Beckham it’s his redemption from the sending off against Argentina in the 1998 World Cup, for Williams his descent into, and recovery from, an on-stage mental health crisis at Roundhay Pak in Leeds. Williams’ story is particularly harrowing, although even now he fails to see that he is most likely the biggest contributor to its cause and that the people he seems to blame – Guy Chambers and Gary Barlow – have facilitated his success by smoothing off his excesses and making him more consumable to an enormous audience. Rude Box may have been Robbie the Artist, but it was never going to be sung by your Uncle Dave at weddings.

Des Buckingham has been labelled a ‘continuity candidate’ following his appointment as the new Oxford United coach. He’s from The City Group, the same cloning factory as Liam Manning, so we can expect more meticulously constructed, calm, planned, data driven proper football. In fact, in many ways he’s not like Manning, he’s more like an updated app on your phone “Hey, we’ve got some bug fixes and completely re-built the software’s empathy engine.”

Buckingham is Manning with a backstory – born in Cowley, mentored by Mickey Lewis, his nan had a season ticket at The Manor. It’s like we’ve Chat GPT’ed the perfect manager. But, as far as I can tell, Buckingham has carefully avoided labelling himself as a fan. That’s either because he isn’t or because he’s wisely trying to avoid the perception that he’s got this figured out because, in Robinsonian terms ‘he cares’ and therefore is guaranteed success. He’ll give you The Girlfriend Experience, but he’s not your girlfriend. 

Not that it’s stopped everyone else leaping onto the narrative, we’ve filled the gaps that Buckingham has left out. When Manning left many, included me, said that there was something about him left us a bit cold. It turns out that, essentially, we were on a promotion charge without a decent backstory. 

Buckingham’s backstory is our backstory; born and raised in the city, carrying the legacy of the club’s forebears, bleeds yellow and blue (though I’d see a doctor urgently, if that’s the case). I certainly feel it; if this is a promotion season, then the Buckingham origin story narrative will define it. I can already read the broadsheet interviews when we draw a Premier League club in the FA Cup Third Round. Let’s hope he doesn’t Inspector Morse it and describe walking down Headington Hill as a child to get the The Manor.

We are happy to hop on board, we are told Des is ‘coming home’ by the club, the Oxford Mail have been tracking his career for years, like he’s the pre-destined Dalai Lama of Oxford football, seared in molten lava, born from the smoking crater at the peak of Shotover Hill and flown down to Horspath by a flock of Red Kites.

At some point the narrative was going to hit reality. In this scenario, Cheltenham Town are the Washington Generals, the hapless fall-guys to the Harlem Globetrotters who night after night are given a royal pasting by all the ball spinning tomfoolery. They are not the point, they are the context. This isn’t trying to belittle them; most teams are Non-Playable Characters in our own video game. They simply sway benignly in the middle distance until we choose to engage with them. They no doubt feel the same about us.

But we overlook that they too have their own narrative, seemingly scraping their way back from a wretched start to the season. They’d hit some form and weren’t going to roll over and allow us to steamroller them. They’re not simply there to finesse our story of triumph and redemption. 

The defeat throws some grit in the well-lubricated narrative machine; this may not be a bad thing, serving to waft away the stench of entitlement and pre-determined fulfilment. Not amongst Buckingham or the players – I imagine knowing that you’re not The Messiah when everyone its calling you that is a sobering thing to reconcile. It’s more the general mood around the club. 

The lesson, I suppose, is not to race to find the narrative, let the narrative write itself. Bolton on Tuesday has become huge and not because it’s the Buckingham homecoming parade; the FA Cup’s coming, Reading’s coming, Derby’s coming, Boxing Day’s coming, the table now looks like we’d expect it to with only Stevenage being the surprise package of the top eight. Suddenly the season is alight, the stories are infinite, the outcomes are multiple. Hopefully, it’s these stories which become bigger than Des Buckingham’s; we will all benefit if they do.