I recently read Terry Waite’s memoir ‘Taken on Trust’ about his kidnapping in Beirut in 1987. He focuses specifically on the four years during which he was held in isolation. With no people to speak to and, in the main, no books, radio or TV to occupy his time, it’s a memoir that explores his inner world, the biographical memories of his past and his spiritual psyche. 

He spends much of his time inside his own mind tending to his internal psychological wellbeing. Freed of the morass of nonsense that occupies most of us all the time, he reaches the outer boundary of his mind where he finds a series of contradictions, he was generous and selfish, spiritual and practical. To survive his ordeal, he concluded that he had to remain confident he’d one day be free, but equally, so not to fall into a downward cycle of despair, he also had to find a way of not believing himself.

We deal with these contradictions all the time. Under Des Buckingham we were caught up in a narrative, somehow we’d found the perfect combination of the emotional and practical. He was an Oxford boy with an innate tactical and technical capability. It was certainly true that Buckingham was an astute reader of the game, the play-off final win is frequently referred to as a tactical masterclass, more often than not his substitutions and tactical tweaks brought about meaningful change.

But when we struggled, it felt like the game passed us by while we were trying to find our lost place in Buckingham’s tactical textbook. He once said that he would continue to stick to his footballing philosophies because it would mean he’d be able to identify what had gone wrong when we lost. There’s a lot of sense in this, but it’s equally true that identifying what went wrong is only half the equation, putting it right is the real challenge. We couldn’t spend the rest of the season learning and not doing, somewhere along the line, we needed to rebalance. 

Gary Rowett’s appointment was viewed as being underwhelming because it was a templated Championship appointment. A lot has been made of being a #teamlikeoxford and we’ve worn it as a badge of pride. But, when people use that phrase, they’re not talking about ‘teams like Oxford’, they’re referring only and specifically to us as a League One side playing in the Championship. In a recent article on the BBC website about the possibility of Manchester United being relegated, the journalist refers to Oxford and Bristol City as examples of the ignominy of playing in the second tier; are Bristol City a ‘team like Oxford’ if they’ve spent 17 of the last 19 seasons in the Championship?

Similarly, a lot was made of the fact we hadn’t won away in the second tier for over 25 years. Owning that sequence is a reminder of the journey we’ve been on in the intervening years, but equally, it’s not a sequence we should be entertaining as a successful club. While these novelties have their charms, they’re also a reminder of our failings.

Rowett’s appointment brings pragmatism, a normalisation of our life in the Championship. His managerial career trajectory would suggest he’s not thinking about a future in the Premier League, he’s part of that pool of workaday Championship managers who can run clubs at this level, secure points and stay in the division. While we’ve taken pride in our unconventional local homegrown manager, our inadequate stadium, being a ‘teams like Oxford’ and our curious history – there’s a point where we have to dial those back. If we don’t then we need to invest more in being the division’s weirdos; which would mean doing things like being relegated to the Conference, losing more games and generally being inadequate.

In the last three games we’ve shown signs that we might be stylistically ditching the idea of being a surprise package and replacing it with a satisfying resilience. Perhaps it was the foul weather or maybe the fug of New Year’s celebrations, but there was a particular doggedness to our performance against Millwall. We’re moving on from simply being enriched by our Championship experience to become more focussed on dealing with the problem before us – picking up enough points to survive as most clubs in the Championship teams are busy doing.

Rowett’s appointment was heralded as the abandonment of proper progressive football as defined by the cult of the City Football Group. In its place is a form of generic Championship-ball. This seems to offer a firmer platform for people like Shemmy Płacheta and Ruben Rodrigues. Rowett’s assessment of Płacheta is that he’s a Premier League athlete without a Premier League mindset. The best way to use him is, in overly simplistic terms, to stick the ball in front of him and let him run after it. Likewise, Ruben Rodrigues, who doesn’t have pace or strength but is an excellent technician when he plays instinctively; reference his through-ball for Josh Murphy at Wembley. Rowett’s preference for getting the ball forward quickly forces Rodrigues to react rather than think.

In our usual self-deprecating way, we’d dismissed the wins against Cardiff and Plymouth as a combination of poor opponents, a new manager bounce and home advantage. This ignored that the whole point of this season is to ensure we’re better than at least three teams. If Cardiff and Plymouth are ‘poor’, then we’re better than them. If Gary Rowett’s been brought into to deliver enough points for survival, then he cannot do better than he’s done. These may be ‘teams like Cardiff or Plymouth’ but winning when we play them has been the whole point all along.

Millwall, and particularly Millwall away, was considered the first true test of the more typical Championship challenge, the kind of generic Championship club that we want to become. It’s no coincidence that Rowett’s tour of duty around the division has taken them in. Our ability to put them in a sleeper hold and then snatch the goal we needed for the points brought a deep satisfaction and showed as much progressiveness as we’ve shown when we obsessively move the ball fluidly along our back line in the name of proper football.

In time we might become tired of being a generic Championship club; of being a team like Millwall or Bristol City. But, in order to become bored of it we’ve got to first become it. If we don’t then we’ll remain a novelty which means enduring notable failures in order to achieve notable successes. While it might make some of the successes sweeter, it’s also a pain we could do without.

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