A phrase that followed us through League One was ‘It’s the hope that kills you.’ This was used to explain near misses, narrow defeats and every player lost to a bigger club. I’d temper that; hope is an emotion which has failure priced into it; you hope something will go your way, but you know it may not. Hope doesn’t kill you, it’s the expectation that’s truly crushing. 

Expectation is binary; there’s no safety net for failure. In the marketplace of our mind, we’re in a blissful state. While hope will always remain, for this season expectation has been almost non-existent. Most people outside the club expected us to finish bottom, fans and those within the club hope we might stay up, to expect would seemed almost arrogant. 

There have been games this season where we’ve felt it would be useful to win – Preston, Stoke – but we haven’t expected it. If we expect nothing and get nothing, it means we can’t drop points because, mentally, we haven’t assumed them to be ours to take.

This fearlessness is liberating, even at 2-0 down against Luton there was no sense we’d lost anything because we hadn’t expected to gain it in the first place. When you’re freed of the burden of expectation, you can surf on a wave of endless hope.

Luton, by contrast, are a mental soup of expectation, hope and bewilderment. They are both over-performing and under-performing, they have no idea where to set the bar of expectation. Expecting to bounce straight back seems arrogant. Hope seems too timid an emotion given their recent status.

For decades Luton and Oxford have danced together like fireflies through English football. This is the only fixture to have been played in each of the top five divisions of the professional game. From a manic 7-4 defeat in 1988 in the top flight to tense, ugly tussles in the Conference, we’ve thrown undignified slugs at each other in every conceivable environment. We’ve been familiar foes, a benchmark to measure each other against. 

Then somehow, they defied gravity by sliding up the divisions. It was like they’d lent on a secret door in the library of a dusty old mansion and found a whole new world to explore, the dimly lit corridor of success led all the way to the cursed promised land of the Premier League.

For a second, it felt good, they felt wanted; Sky explored Kenilworth Road’s idiosyncrasies and treated them like they were somehow a brand new discovery. They threw in some 80s nostalgia for the older folk. Then, reality took hold, they were ill-equipped for the modern day Premier League and an inevitable relegation happened.

What did it leave them? Financially enriched, they should be sitting comfortably towards the top of the table, but equally, given their history, a comfortable position in the Championship should be acceptable. I suspect the expectation is currently outstripping their ability to deliver by some margin.

This seemed to be at the heart of our comeback. After a calamitous opening in which we seemed to surrender to the conditions as much as our opponent, the lack of angst, driven by the lack of expectation allowed us to crawl our way out of the hole we found ourselves in.

With half-time and fifteen minutes of thinking time ahead, an opportunity for intrusive thoughts to seep into the psyche like the rainwater permeating the players’ shirts, El Mizouni shifted the play with a deft pass and Goodrham swept the ball beyond the keeper for 2-1. 

Goodrham’s temperament aligns with the general mood. As a result, he’s growing to become one of those generational Oxford players that reinforce your belief in football. Comparisons to Joey Beauchamp are obvious, though uncomfortable, but these are players who can define a decade. Football economics is likely to see Goodrham’s career head off elsewhere before his on-field legend is cemented, but his growing value surely means we’ll feel his legacy for years to come.

The goal shifted the mood, Des Buckingham’s substitutions seem to be powered by a mystical force at the moment. His eyes rolled to the back of his head, sparks came out of his ears and his finger extended towards Kyle Edwards.

Edwards says he’s been subject to ‘god’s plan’, which given what he’s gone through is a pretty shitty plan to bestow on anyone. Whatever divine force is driving him, it’s catapulted him into a new plain. He marauded down the wing, leaving a wake of Luton bodies, and fired the ball into Ruben Rodrigues to make it 2-2.

If there was to be a winner, it looked like it was going one way. We swept forward, slicing through Luton, swarming all over them, devouring their withered carcass. The only injustice was that the goal didn’t come. 

It was the partnerships which were particularly satisfying; Edwards and Kioso brought the best out of each other, El Mizouni and Goodrham bamboozled their way to new angles and forgotten dimensions, Harris’ endless work creates a continuous threat from Rodrigues. The biblical weather conditions made it feel like a mediaeval battle in a generational war; we were eviscerating them.

With 14 minutes remaining, Luton introduced Liam Walsh, thirty-six seconds later he was walking down the tunnel having scythed down Siriki Dembele. Paradoxically, his hysterical cameo may have been Luton’s saviour. Now they had a reason to defend, they’d been disadvantaged and decapitated, they didn’t need to live up to expectations anymore, they could be the underdog for the final minutes.

A point was enough, another step towards survival. Eventually, if this continues, our confidence will raise the bar. Then, expectation will re-emerge. For now, demanding nothing more than effort and endeavour is rewarding us in ways nobody expected.