The week unwrapped

Saturday’s draw with Millwall was full of drama and excitement. There was Cameron Brannagan’s physics defining first goal, Shemmy Placheta’s 94^th minute inch perfect carpet burner for the equaliser and Darragh ‘The Menace’ Ennis from the Chase in the South Stand Lower. Maybe the Oxford hierarchy, who were at the game rumoured to be bringing in new some rich new benefactors, could ask Ennis to introduce them to Bradley Walsh.

Elsewhere, and we really mean elsewhere, news reaches us that Yannick Wildschut has announced his retirement. To celebrate, Matt Taylor shared a video on his Instagram Stories of Yannick singing I’m Still standing to the players dressed as a hybrid of Elton John and Vegas-era Elvis. You could say it was a ‘Who’s Who’ of Oxford United being entertained by a ‘Who’s he?’ of Oxford United. 

The video features Sam Baldock alongside, Simon Eastwood (dressed as a soldier), James Henry (Top Gun), Oisin Smyth (Patrick Star from Spongebob Squarepants), CamBran (super hero), Sam Long (American footballer) and Josh Murphy (um, Man City shirt). Non-fancy dressers were Elliott Moore, Kyle Joseph and Marcus Browne. Ciaron Brown, came as the character ‘Ciaron Brown dresses up for no fool’.

Anyway, enough of the good old days, next up is the archetypal Championship hypothesis, can we really do it on a cold, wet Tuesday evening against Stoke?  

Potterfacts

In a division full of Stokes, Stoke are proving to be one of the Stokiest. With the world’s oldest up and coming manager Mark Robins in charge, their success is built on a solid defence which, like every team we seem to have played this season, sees them sitting third. 

They arrive three days after roasting Bristol City 5-1 so we might have good reason to be concerned, but there are chinks of light. Goals haven’t exactly flowed, Saturday was the first time since August they’d scored more than one, and they’re also quite streaky; winning their first three before going one in five. Their current run is three wins from four, so maybe they’re due another dip?

Football friend | Dean Whitehead

Oxford United had an enviable talent factory for many years. Fred Ford produced players like Les Taylor, Kevin Brock, Peter Foley and Andy Thomas. Maurice Evans oversaw the development of Joey Beauchamp, Chris Allen and Paul Powell. But while there was plenty of talent on show, many of the prospects didn’t quite make it. 

Powell could have played for England, but lacked the application, Beauchamp famously struggled when he got his big move and Chris Allen never established himself when he left for Nottingham Forest.

As the 1990s became the 2000s the supply of talented players coming through the ranks dried up. Jamie Brooks would have been the exception but for the cruellest luck. Others like Simon Weatherstone and Rob Folland promised briefly before fading.

Dean Whitehead looked like he might be another talented waif when he snuck onto the scene in 1999. The club were in an all-consuming death spiral at the time, too busy to really notice Whitehead’s potential. None-the-less, he played 23 times in the catastrophic 2000/01 season, ending up on the winning side just twice.

After the move to the Kassam in 2001, he continued to feature under Mark Wright, though the side continued to struggle. Wright was sacked in November 2001 and replaced by Ian Atkins whose interest wasn’t in nurturing players, but in getting down to the business of winning. 

It worked, as ugly as Atkins’ football was, it was effective. Whitehead developed a new side to his game, the ability to work hard for the team, building a robust shell around his talent. 

Gradually he shifted from adaptable cover to a first-choice pick as Oxford pushed towards promotion in 2003/4. The challenge fell away and then crumbled when Atkins fell out with Firoz Kassam and left for Bristol Rovers.

At the end of the 2004 season Whitehead’s contract was up while Oxford slipped back into crisis under Graham Rix. Despite attempts to keep him – promising him a big pay rise and the club captaincy – he opted to join Sunderland where he helped them get promotion to the Premier League. In 2009 he moved to Stoke, a side very much in the Ian Atkins mould.

In 2011 he was on the bench as Stoke reached the FA Cup final, coming on for the final half-an-hour. He remained until 2013 before being released to join Middlesbrough. He nearly returned to the Premier League, missing out in the Championship Play-offs to Norwich. He moved to Huddersfield and was on the bench when they won play-off promotion in 2017. After retirement, Whitehead went into coaching where he’s now assistant Head Coach at Blackburn Rovers, a rare case of an Oxford homegrown talent that grew a backbone. 

From the archive | Oxford United 4 Stoke City 1 (1996)

There are barren runs and there are barren runs. Oxford’s experience in the Championship has always been streaky – periods of blistering form followed by periods of nothingness.

In 1996/7, we followed a promising start to the season with a six-game winless run, a slump that seemed to have no way out. With Matt Elliott, Phil Gilchrist and Phil Whitehead holding the fort, four of the six ended in draws but none saw us score a goal.

When you get to six goalless games, you overthink the problem, what used to come naturally feels clunky. There’s one classic antidote for a goal drought that never actually happens: one to go in off your arse.

Stoke were being quite Stokey at the time, sitting in a creditable seventh place while we’d slipped from 6th to 14th, propped up by seven-goal ego-typhoon Nigel Jemson. 

It took just five minutes to break the drought; Joey Beauchamp danced down the right wing towards the Cuckoo Lane End before launching a long looping cross to the back post which looked set to drop harmlessly out of play for a goal-kick. 

Jemson refused to give up the opportunity, stretching to head it back across goal. And in that moment, a miracle happened. For absolutely no reason at all, the underrated crab-like midfielder Martin Gray appeared to head in with the goalkeeper stranded. Much maligned, some might argue it was less a case of in off the arse and more in off an arse. Gray had struck his first goal for the club and his second in professional football, a gap of three years between the two.

Suddenly everything flowed, Mark Angel ran the length of the pitch, exchanged passes with Jemson and blasted in for two. Stoke pulled one back on the hour before Jemson lobbed in the third with twelve minutes to go. Two minutes later Phil Whitehead launched the ball onto Jemson’s head who glanced it onto Martin Aldridge for number four. Jemson may have been a twat (Moody: 2024), but he was a talented twat.

It didn’t end there, the result sparked a five-game goal-laden winning streak, after the four against Stoke, there were three more against Ipswich, two against Port Vale in the League Cup and three away at Manchester City. After a win over Huddersfield we moved up to sixth and thoughts turned to the play-offs. 

Naturally, streakers’ law struck, we won one of the next seven and registered just seven more wins all season leaving us 17^th. Despite that, the miracle of Martin Gray will live long in the memory.