On Sunday, I went to see Jon Ronson’s Psychopath Night in Oxford. In it, he recalls the story of Max Mosley, the son of fascist leader Oswald, who’d become the President of Formula 1 Racing. In 2008, The News of the World ran a front-page story revealing that he’d been involved in a ‘Sick Nazi Orgy with Five Hookers’.

Mosley sued, not because the orgy didn’t happen, it absolutely did, but because he argued (successfully) that it wasn’t Nazi inspired but ‘German themed’. 

I often wonder in what circumstances Oxblogger might end; I could die, of course, or maybe I’ll just wake up one morning and decide not to do it. I could, I suppose, have my trivial peccadillos exposed by the Oxford Mail. Maybe, like Mosley, I should be ready to own the shame. In anticipation of that fateful day, here goes.

I really like Paul Warne’s style of football.

Warne may dress head to toe in Sweaty Betty-style deluxe athleisure wear – great for the school run and the yoga studio – but his style of football is a rugged, pleasing sensory overload.

In 2020 we were brutalised by his Rotherham side when they scored three first half goals in an attacking frenzy at The Kassam.

In the 2022 documentary podcast, The Moment of Truth, Karl Robinson avoided hotels he thought were haunted while Warne relentlessly drove his side onto another promotion. Last year, now with Derby, he screwed us first into the floor and then onto defeat despite us leading 2-0 after ten minutes.

Warne’s football is a flood of physical, emotional and spiritual energy, it proved to be an enviably effective way of getting into The Championship. The real challenge for him has been finding a way of staying there.

Many saw the game against Derby as a must-win, mainly because they’re a recently promoted side. This trivialised their threat and ignored that we’re also a recently promoted side and one who scored eighteen more points than us last season. 

It’s hard to calibrate our expectations this season; it seems too arrogant to assume that points are ours to claim. Equally, staying up will require wins, so we have to expect the team to deliver some success. The problem is that these expectations have to remain in the abstract; we need to expect to win some games, we just don’t know which ones.

So, this was not so much a must-win, it was more a can, could or should-win.

It was also a benchmark of how far we’d come since that bruising defeat last Christmas. Early on we showed that the equation had shifted, although it was hard to say definitively whether we’ve improved or they’ve got worse. We’re clearly outperforming our expectations, but equally Warne described his side’s first half as horrific, so I guess it’s was a bit of both.

The decision to start with Dane Scarlett in place of Mark Harris looked like an attempt to put pressure on their backline and prevent the overloading that we’ve struggled to contain in the past. Harris is a disciplined striker, but he’s more likely to hold off from harassing defenders – Scarlett’s more active, his pace forces defenders to act more quickly.

It seemed to work, it wasn’t pretty, but we weren’t getting mauled like we have in the past. The goal, when it came, was another boost to Scarlett’s confidence and another deft touch. He still doesn’t seem to sure what to do when the ball hits the back of the net. I guess that will come.

For a good while, we looked broadly in control. Derby’s hard running looked dynamic, but Ben Nelson cruised with growing assurance, Elliott Moore looked untroubled, even Ciaron Brown played with a rarely seen cultured finesse.

Up front, though, we didn’t offer much and the second goal didn’t come. Gradually, Warne’s War Machine cranked into gear. Dembele hobbled off, Scarlett tired, pressure transferred onto our midfield stripped of Brannagan and McEachran. Eventually, Vaulks buckled, scooping the ball into the air, causing chaos in defence and leaving Mendez-Laing to fire home the equaliser. It wasn’t quite the error that led to the last minute defeat at Coventry, it’s more that Vaulks has become a single point of failure in midfield. When the pressure came, nobody was there to cover him.

On the hour Harris replaced Scarlett in what looked like a pre-planned change in order to steer the team through the final third of the game. We rallied briefly, but never looked threatening. They continued to press and it became a gritty pub car park brawl. In a retro way, it was a fun way to spend a Tuesday.

But, Des Buckingham was unable to respond, we’ve burnt our matches, he couldn’t pull another rabbit out of a hat because all his remaining rabbits are in the treatment room.

Afterwards on the radio Jerome Sale, Nathan Cooper and Nick Harris talked nervously about our teetering form. No wins in five, or one defeat in seven, good or bad? Take your pick.

The lingering fear that problems are around the corner may just be confirmation bias. Deep down we’re expecting a relegation fight, our subconscious is looking for signs of our imminent collapse. Equally, the table now seems to have split into two – the teams who you can imagine playing in the Premier League and the teams who you can imagine playing in League One. We are at the top of the bottom, it’s a long way ahead of where we thought we’d be.

It’s not just Paul Warne’s high pressure game that we’ve got to withstand now. Whether it’s surviving injuries, defying expectations or battling our paranoia, this whole season is just going to be one massive stress test.