My mind was blank, like sitting in a theatre looking at an empty stage waiting for something to happen. Things began to fill the space – first the scenery – it’s Thursday, which is OK, nothing bad happens on a Thursday. Then the characters; meetings I’ve got, things I’ve got to do. There’s nothing particularly concerning there, this close to Christmas few people really want to kick-off anything new or deal with difficult stuff.

Once the scene had assembled in my head, it started to move, like the opening village scene of a pantomime where the cast animatedly talk to each other to create the illusion of hustle and bustle. But, this scene was quite benign, I don’t have any of those unresolvable frustrations that race around your head in the darkness. The kind that are never that important when the sun comes up.

Eventually the cast began to move into position, ready for the opening number. Something that I hadn’t spotted came onto the stage. Ah, the main character is ready for their opening solo. It’s large and green, it strides to the front, adopts a power stance and looks out to the audience; it’s last night’s game against QPR. My heart sank.

Maybe it was where I was sitting, perhaps it’s my TV, or maybe my eyesight is worse than I thought but there was something about the contrast of the picture which meant the lasting impression of last night’s game was staring for two hours at a large green blob. The camera angles are weird, action down one of the wings has to be shown practically as an overhead shot. When they pull to a wider angle the players seem to disappear into the lurid swamp.

This, and Sky’s lacklustre production, meant the game sort of meandered into being. There was a vague narrative around QPR’s teenage striker Rayan Kolli who’d scored twice on Saturday. You get a sense that it’s as much to do with his great look as it is with his prospects as a footballer. Hell, even I wanted him to do well.

For us, the narrative was more muted, we’re slipping. You hope it’s the quirk of our game being postponed on Saturday and those around us picking up points. These aren’t the nuances that half-informed barely interested commentators pick up. But, there are other signs – we’re not scoring goals, the sequences of bad results are extending, we’re not even being competitive in defeat anymore, and injuries alone don’t explain it all away.

Rangers may have been buoyed by their result against Norwich, but they did their very best to not let it show. The game was afflicted by a form of rigamortis. The ball moved, the players didn’t. 

The home side expanded out to fill the pitch, we played the ball around in the hope of finding a hole. None appeared. Maybe it was the hoops, but it reminded me of the pedestrian performance against Reading away last season. Then I found out that was a year ago today.

Tyler Goodrham tried to be industrious in midfield while processing fatherhood and the endless speculation that he’ll do Bebeto’s baby cradling goal celebration when he scores. Przemysław Płacheta was active down the left, but it looked more like he was more trying to avoid a persistent wasp than offering an outlet. On the other side, Matt Phillips looked all regal and Premier League-ey, but his range was so off he’d have done well to go and stand on the hard shoulder of the Westway so his overhit crosses might actually drop into the box. 

And then there’s Mark Harris. Oh god, why have we fallen for him? How stupid and naive of us to give him a nickname. Criticism feels like you’re shooting a dog. ‘Oh he always has barren spells…’ they say ‘…he’ll bounce back, like he always does’. But forget he’s good old Sparkles for a moment, forget the black eye and extended post-Wembley bender with Ruben. Think of him as a faceless football unit. Can we really sustain a striker who finds scoring in autumn an abomination? Do his circadian rhythms really prevent him from finding the net? And when we say ‘always does’ do we mean ‘did it last season’. And was our season saved by his goals or by the form of another player whose qualities were way beyond the division he was in? A player we don’t have anymore.

It’s not Harris alone (there you go, I’m already feeling bad about that paragraph), we lacked, well, everything. The commentary team tried to spin a narrative to suggest Rangers are resurgent, but in reality they pretty much stood still and waited for us to punch ourselves in the face.

The goals seemed utterly predictable. Peter Kioso and Elliott Moore provided the leg up for Kolli to nod down to Sam Field to fire home then the backline contrived to expose Kioso who was robbed by Saito who fed Field to score his second. In between our passes were inaccurate, our control was off. A Team Like Oxford were playing like A Team Like Oxford. 

All is not lost, far from it, we’re outside the relegation zone and have a game in hand, we have January to make adjustments and are slightly less injury ravaged than we were. We’re probably higher up the table than we thought we’d be and there’s still cohesion between the fans, manager and players.

Relegation itself is nothing to fear, we should still enjoy the Championship experience and there’s a lot to be gained whether we survive or not. We’ve broken the mental barrier of being stuck in League One, this squad would compete with anyone at that level, we can still have a lot of fun in the coming months. We just need to re-find that sense of nihilism that we’re here for a good time, even if it’s not a long time.

But, if we’re going to stay up then December is a month where points need to be achieved. Each blank compounds the pressure, with nothing on the board so far and Leeds in a fortnight, Saturday’s game against Sheffield Wednesday feels very big indeed. 

While you’re here…

The Oxblogger Newsletter Issue 3 has just, um, dropped. This issue spans fifty years of Oxford United while entering the multiverse. We head back to the 1970s as Ian Davies explores his first liaisons with Oxford. Fast forward a decade or so and Will Richards has pieced together an intriguing piece on what our UEFA Cup adventure would have looked like in 1987 after winning the Milk Cup. Into the 1990s and Dan Curtis takes us through his recent labour of love – a fabulous twelve-minute supercut of (nearly) every goal Joey Beauchamp scored. Then, we crash into the modern day with Andrew Dawson making a compelling case for Sam Long’s Mr Oxford credentials while Jonny Biscuits wraps it all up in a neat bundle by exploring what we mean by Club Mentality.

You can read it here and subscribe for free.