From the moment we arrived you could sense something unpleasant was in the air. We were confronted by a marauding horde; lawless, focussed, transfixed. Dressed identically, a uniform of sorts. We’d been warned, but to see it in the flesh chills your blood and takes you by surprise. You could see it in their eyes, they were hell bent; fuelled up with prosecco and baying for a bottomless brunch. 

Wait, what now? 

Depending on which side of the family you’re on, we were either a beneficiary or victim of Premier Inn’s dynamic pricing on Saturday. Apparently a hotel room in Winchester for the Christmas market is £100 cheaper in November than it is in December. 

A breakdown in communication meant this early December family tradition, complete with increasingly reluctant and disinterested teenagers, happened, for once, in November, clashing with our game against Millwall. 

So rather than face the East London retrograde hoolies, I had to navigate a battalion of similarly terrifying women living, loving, and laughing while buying alpaca wool socks, artisan gin and hand-crafted wooden pepper pots from people wearing fingerless gloves standing in little sheds. The experiences were comparable.

The game would have to take care of itself. Despite their good form, Millwall felt infinitely more winnable than Middlesborough or Sheffield United. But, that also made it more real. You could just about convince yourself that the last two defeats – sobering as they were – meant little. This felt like we needed to get something from it or risk drifting into an inescapable slump. Losing to Premier League wannabes won’t determine the outcome of the season, but they can leave their mark, a defeat to Millwall could open wounds. 

Astonishingly, there was no giant screen showing the game amongst the Glühwein and curried bratwurst stalls. I assumed the lack of updates was because there was nothing to report until I was informed by a local about O2’s notoriously patchy coverage in the area. The anxiety grew, the silences were deafening, then outside Flapjackery – purveyors of gourmet flapjack – my feed updated. 0-0. Then, more silence.

I have a decent track record when it comes to missing home games. They’re frequently forgettable goalless draws and I rarely get a sense that I’ve missed something. I was lulled into a false sense of security and left to listen to the Salvation Army band parping out the Christmas banger ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’. 

Half-time approached, the first staging post of any recovery, the signal was dead so I assumed we’d got to the break on par. I drifted through another slim channel of coverage, my phone pinged, my heart sank. It was a tweet saying ‘Work to do’ – that template euphemism clubs use to signal that we were behind. 

When it eventually came through that Japhet Tanganga had nodded home in injury time, the hammer blow caused a tidal wave in my Instagrammable latte.

Could this be the moment? I thought. Not so much the knock-out blow, but the one that would leave us so groggy we’d simply crumple at any further setback. December is going to be a critical month – seven of our last ten games have been against teams in the top half, five of our next six are against teams towards the bottom. We’ll need three of them to be below us to survive. This is where we need to farm for points, but to do that we need something akin to momentum, this wasn’t it.

My mood darkened; my mind played tricks on me, I sought for a simple way out. Fleetingly, I entertained the idea of sacking Des Buckingham. That’s what other teams at our end of the table have done, perhaps we need a new alchemist. 

I had a word with myself, which attracted funny looks from the woman selling metal garden curiosities of indeterminate purpose. I reminded myself that this isn’t what this season is about. It’s about survival and by definition it’s going to be a close-run thing. In order to be a close-run thing, you have to accept there will be pain. Now is not the time to panic. 

The town was filling up, the smiles on the faces of people in bobble hats and scarves became more strained. Despite wanting to believe we were bit-part players in a recreation of A Christmas Carol, the temperature was touching 20 degrees. It was like a mild summer’s day. We were done, Christmas was officially recognised, so we headed for the car park. 

The journey home gave me time to think. I’d always accepted relegation as a possibility this season, but it turns out I hadn’t quite manifested it. In truth, I subconsciously envisaged a relegation scrap in which we would survive. I hadn’t quite recreated in my head the despairing failures or the prospect of being doomed months before it was confirmed. It’s been 18 years; there are lots of people who’ve never even experienced a relegation with Oxford. Even for those who have, the memories have faded. There’s a temptation to take a wrecking ball to everything we’ve achieved just to avoid the feelings of dejection soak in.

‘We’ve scored!’, said someone from the back of the car.

‘Who scored?’ I asked. I needed a name.

‘Don’t know.’

There was silence, was this a phantom? A hallucination? A goal without a goalscorer, that’s not a goal is it? Has it been disallowed? Then…

‘TYLER!’

Of course it was Tyler. Despite the temptation to infantilise him, he’s one of our paths to survival. He’d been like a caged songbird in recent weeks in a campaign that seems to be ‘Stop Tyler, Stop Oxford’. Cameron Brannagan, the oil that lubricates our midfield worked the ball to Goodrham who danced inside and rifled his shot into the top right hand corner. 

We briefly discussed that it was a great way to celebrate the, um, due date of his first child before agreeing that this wasn’t a thing. Tensions eased, of course we wanted three points, but one would do. A few minutes later it was confirmed; a soothing balm.

As much as we’d like to bounce back and recreate the magic of the early weeks of the season, recovery from bruising defeats is always going to be a gradual and unsteady path. This week a point, then build towards the next win. Never too high, never too low.

We drove past the ground on the way home, there were a group of Millwall fans in identical flat caps and Lyle and Scott casual wear. They just wanted their country back, or to catch a bus to the station. They looked unhappy and a bit lost, which cheered me no end, perhaps they could do with a glass of Prosecco and some forced Christmas cheer. I didn’t suggest it.