I had a friend at school who wore standard issue, thick-rimmed NHS glasses, crumpled shirts that were slightly yellowing and trousers that were a bit short. His shoes were cheap slip-ons and he made no attempt to have anything resembling a hairstyle.

In theory, he should have been a target of scorn and ridicule, but nobody touched him because he simply didn’t care about anything. There was no point in beating him up because he’d have just carried on as if nothing had happened. I really liked him; he made me laugh.

One lesson we had a replacement teacher, I forget the details, but the subject was vaguely related to business skills. With no plan to follow she got us to practice typing for an hour. While others followed instructions in a vaguely disengaged way, from the back of the room I could hear a hammering noise. I turned to see my friend repeatedly hitting the ‘A’ key on his keyboard with one finger.

Eventually the teacher intervened. ‘What are you doing?’ she said.

‘Practising my typing’ he said dutifully without a pause from jackhammering the key over and over again.

‘Is that the best way to practice? Just by hitting the ‘A’ key constantly.’ She asked.

‘Yes’ he deadpanned ‘Next week I start on the ‘B’ key’.

It was unplayable, he was following instructions and, as long as he kept his nerve, the substitute teacher, though suspicious of the unsound pedagogical foundation of his learning, had no leverage or motivation to tell him what he was doing was wrong.

This seems to have become Gary Rowett’s inspiration for his plan to keep us in the division. Will Vaulks’ long throws to Michal Helik or Ben Nelson has become the equivalent of hitting the A key while ignoring all other options. You don’t need extensive scouting or video analysis to see it, it’s evident if you scroll through our highlights on YouTube.

You can’t criticise Rowett for reverting to it, it worked against Sheffield United, Middlesborough, Watford and Norwich. Add a couple of goals from corners – Helik at Hull and Moore against Coventry and, since January, you’re looking at 75% of our goals from set pieces, half from Will Vaulks throws alone. 

To look at it another way, it works out at just under one goal a game. Which means, if the opposition can reduce that average, the strategy collapses and our attacking threat is reduced to almost nothing. The answer is not complicated; stop Vaulks, stop us.

Last night against QPR, the strategy was being deployed with such precision that at one point our kit man, Jonny Edmunds, was sprinting around the perimeter of the pitch encouraging the ball boys and girls (ballpeople?) to up the pace with which they returned the ball. Stan Mills even spent some of his warm up cleaning balls sitting on the cones with his tabard. It wasn’t subtle.

It’s hard not to become fixated on it, I was waiting for Vaulks’ first attempt like I was at a Sabrina Carpenter concert wanting her to sing Espresso. Rowett thought we looked leggy, there was certainly a lack of vibrancy in the way we started, but, equally, QPR knew their first objective was to prevent throw-ins from inside their half. For the most part, they were successful. It took seventeen minutes to concede one, by which point we were already a goal and our best player down. If you concede when you’re averaging less than a goal a game, you’re already in a lot of trouble. When it becomes two, it’s hopeless. 

Rowett bemoaned the nature of goals we conceded, but that’s kind of missing the point. While they could have been avoided, mistakes are an occupational hazard. If your primary route to goal gives you just under one goal a game, you need more options to give you a cushion. Having a variety of attacking responses is part of the antidote to conceding cheap goals.

It got worse, the loss of Hidde Ter Avest meant our defence was routed. 2-0 down with a ragged backline forced Rowett into new plan, Vaulks was given a piece of paper with the new instructions on, it probably said ‘Lads, I think we’re buggered, best of luck out there, Gary’.

Mills’ introduction made a difference, he’s direct and instinctive, and his attacks down the right seemed to ease our rigor mortis. With more licence to be footballers and not chess pieces, Dembele and Placheta combined to supply Mills with the chance to make it 2-1. The goal showed we can do it; we’re just not designed to.

The remaining half-an-hour became increasingly frenzied, but retraining our muscle memory in real time has consequences. We threatened in parts, but it still wasn’t the onslaught we needed, the crowd can only provide so much momentum. Somewhere deep down was still the deep urge to try and win the game 1-0 from a set piece.

There was always going to be a lot of injury-time, the referee punishing QPR’s time wasting with minutes rather than cards. Maybe we were banking on them capitulating under the pressure. But almost immediately, Siriki Dembele conceded possession in midfield and Yang Min-heok ran through to score.

As was pointed out on Radio Oxford, there are still reasons for hope, four teams have got to out-perform us in order for us to drop into the relegation zone. Teams at the bottom don’t pick up points quickly and many are playing each other. The idea that they will all suddenly find their form is unlikely. Plus, Portsmouth – a team many think are safe – have the same number of points. It might be less precarious than it feels.

For me, what last night really showed was that Gary Rowett has bet the farm on a single route to survival. He may be successful in that and I hope he is. But whether we survive or go down, many of our footballing receptors have been blunted as a result and will prove difficult to re-ignite. Is this improving our players? Have our most saleable assets had their development stalled because we’re so focussed on hitting that one key on the keyboard rather learning to type?

Previous managers – Chris Wilder, Michael Appleton, Karl Robinson and Des Buckingham have a common link in that they’ve had a transformative impact on players which became baked into the club. Tim Williams often talks about building the club’s maturity, layer upon layer, this approach doesn’t do that. He may argue there are other benefits, and he may well be right.

Rowett seems to have been brought in to achieve a short-term goal, he’s become more like a consultant with a context-free, highly simplified solution. He’s not there to become attached. This might be good for his brand, many managers sustain careers by becoming troubleshooters – Allardyce, Bruce, Warnock – and there are always struggling Championship and League One clubs who need a stabilising force, but whether it sets us up for a decent season in the Championship next season or an immediate promotion back from League One is open to debate.