One of Gary Rowett’s qualities is his ability to live in the moment. Last season was a case in point, Rowett arrived halfway through just as we’d slipped into the relegation zone. Where others may have looked at our situation and cited the need for a couple of transfer windows to sort out the problems in the squad, he built on what he had, remodelling us into a functioning unit capable of surviving the division. It was rarely pretty, but it was effective.

This is a key aspect of good management, it’s something that’s given people like Chris Wilder their careers. It’s very easy to try and stick to your principles, rigidly working towards some end-point which always is just beyond the horizon, slightly out of reach. At some point you’ve got to deliver.

It might be a quality he’s developed from his playing days. Being a solid, reliable player perhaps gives you the perspective that success is to be worked at in the here and now and that consistency is a quality which is just as important as technical ability. Having a vision and looking at the big picture is one thing, being on top of the detail is an underrated quality. Plenty of superstars have found that management has not flowed as easily from their supposed innate genius.

There’s been a lot of reading between the lines at Rowett’s recent interviews. The conclusion seems to be that he’s frustrated by pre-season and a lack of activity in the transfer market. These things may be true, but I don’t think it means a huge deal; Rowett will continue to work with what he has. Of course he’d like more signings and more time but I don’t see him losing motivation or even resigning because of some high-status principles. The management world is too precarious to simply walk out of a club based on values alone, particularly in a division which has 24 jobs and fishes from a global pond for its talent.

The First Round of the EFL Cup hardly represents one of the highlights of the season, it’s as close to an in-season pre-season friendly as you can get. The withering interest in the competition has brought some calls for it to be abandoned – typically by rich teams that think football exclusively exists to enrich them further. None-the-less as much as we like to believe Oxford are sticking to their principles, the reality is that as we get bigger, the less regard we have for the traditions of the one major competition we’ve won (this being the 40th anniversary, of course). Excluding the EFL Trophy, the win over Colchester was watched by the smallest crowd of the 2020s .

In many ways, it was a game we couldn’t win, a comfortable victory would reinforce the belief that these are meaningless mismatches that get in the way of more important business. A less-than-comfortable win further reinforces the view that something is going wrong. A defeat would plunge us into crisis.

But last night’s win was perhaps more important than we give it credit. It’s not a result anyone will remember, even six months’ from now, but after the defeat against Portsmouth and with two away games against difficult opposition to come, anything that gives us a foothold in the season can only help.

In fact, if we work on the principles that all away games are difficult, the next obviously winnable game is not until Derby at home on the 18^th October so a couple of EFL Cup games embedded into the League programme, may be more important than we’d like to admit. At least we’re not, for example, Blackburn who are now staring at a couple of defeats with a none-too-easy game at home to Birmingham on Saturday.

Although hardly a focus, for Rowett progress in the EFL Cup offers more opportunities to develop cohesion and build fitness, whereas, for fans, goals like Tyler Goodrham’s might mute some of the more theatrical gasps of horror and over-reaction if things go wrong. Positive thoughts alone will not make the season a success, but it won’t do us any harm.

I’m sure the EFL Cup hasn’t loomed large on this season’s battle plan, as any serious-minded commentator will tell you with sage reverence, the game isn’t even the most important date for the club this week, but it should be viewed, perhaps, as an unplanned opportunity to establish a foothold in the season.