The week unwrapped

Well, that brightened the mood a bit, Luke Harris’ excellent goal gave us an encouragingly resolute 1-1 draw with second placed Middlesbrough on Saturday which helped avoid a demoralising third consecutive defeat. 

A notable returnee was Tyler Goodrham, who the club insist on referring to as ‘Starboy’. Given that Goodrham, in the last year, has bought a house, had a baby and, as of last week, became engaged to be married, the club’s use of the nickname is giving off strong ‘jealous protective mum’ energy – “ooh, he’ll always be MY Starboy”. We fully expect them to turn up to the wedding in a white dress, crying hysterically before making the whole thing about them.

Canaryfacts

Norwich City are in one hot mess; in fact they haven’t seen this level of messy since Delia Smith got hold of the keys to the Carrow Road gin cupboard. After a catastrophic start to the season, they fired Liam Manning and have now turned to Belgian, Phillipe Clement.

But the problems go deeper than that, the archetypal yo-yo club, they’ve fallen a few yos short in recent years and now the Premier League parachute payments are drying up they no longer have a competitive budget.

As a result, they’ve picked up precisely zero points at home this season and were pumped 4-1 at Birmingham on Saturday. For most Oxford fans that tells you just one thing. But I’m not saying what it is. I’m just not. You can’t make me.

Football friend | Liam Manning

Oxford and Norwich don’t have many great football friends; I was going to do something on Dave Smith but couldn’t find anything on him apart from the suggestion, on one Norwich forum, that he became a ‘celebrity chauffeur’.

Turns out that it might be a case of mistaken identity as there was a celebrity chauffeur called Dave Smith, who was about 20 years older, who got caught up in the Operation Yewtree Jimmy Saville paedophile scandal. You’ve got to be careful about not mixing up your Dave Smiths.

So, let’s bring things up to date and talk about Liam Manning. Manning slipped onto Oxford’s radar when he was at MK Dons in 2021/22. A City Group graduate, at MK he insisted on an extreme version of playing out from the back. It nearly got him promoted, but two particularly comical gaffs allowed first Mark Sykes and then Billy Boden to score winners home and away and see us take the points that stopped them going up automatically.

Manning failed to get the Dons going again after their play-off disappointment and was sacked. Meanwhile, we were going through our own meltdown as Karl Robinson’s five year tenure span out of control.

Manning was appointed to the vacant Oxford hot seat when we were on a run of one point from ten games. It took another seven to register his first win, but his methodical approach paid dividends almost immediately. It was enough to secure League One football, much to everyone’s relief.

The following season was transformative, Manning overhauled the squad bringing in Mark Harris, Ruben Rodrigues, Greg Leigh, Stan Mills and James Beadle amongst others. Nine wins in the opening eleven games saw us sit in second, a point behind Portsmouth with a game in hand.

The run was enough to alert Bristol City, who’d just sacked Nigel Pearson. Despite Manning’s claim that he was staying, on the eve of an EFL Trophy game against Chelsea, he left taking half his backroom staff with him.

Manning was never a warm character, he was monotone and data driven. His fabled PowerPoint presentation about behaviours had almost mythical powers. A move to The Championship made logical sense for him, but logic is in short supply in football. His abrupt departure tapped into the emotional, the fans were fuming.

Fast forward through Des Buckingham’s arrival and promotion and all that and suddenly we’re a Championship club, almost by accident. Manning’s contribution to that shouldn’t be ignored, though most were happy for Des to take the plaudits.

The following September we headed to Ashton Gate as equals. Oxford fans filled the stand with inflatable snakes and barracked Manning mercilessly. We took a one-goal lead into the break with Ruben Rodrigues scoring, a player who’d felt Manning’s departure more keenly than most. Some said Manning was on the brink of getting the sack but a comeback win saved his bacon and slowly he found his feet, guiding City to the play-offs despite the tragic death of his young son.

Then, he did it again. In June, Manning walked out of Bristol City and left for Norwich. Although returning to his hometown probably made sense personally, professionally, it was a disaster. Norwich, perennial promotion hopefuls, were crumbling. Manning lasted until November by which time he’d lost 11 of his 17 games.

Where he goes next is anyone’s guess, his stock as Bristol City manager should allow him to secure another Championship berth or at least something at the top of League One. His coldness and apparent lack of reliability is not going to give him too many more chances.

From the archive | Norwich City 2 Oxford United 3 (1996)

The season was only 17 days old when Oxford faced Norwich in the League Cup at Carrow Road in 1996. None-the-less it was the third time the two sides had faced each other. The first leg of the tie at The Manor had ended 1-1. A week later the teams met in the League, again at The Manor, with Norwich winning 1-0. 

The third meeting was like having two starving alley cats fighting over an emaciated rat.  The fun started after eleven minutes when Neil Adams opened the scoring for Norwich from the penalty spot after a cross deflected off Mike Ford’s arm.

Five minutes later Robert Fleck was sent off for getting his head in the way of Martin Gray’s elbow. It took until seven minutes into the second half for Matt Elliott to power through the Norwich defence to equalise. With ten minutes remaining, Darren Eadie reduced Norwich to nine men after the winger scythed down Ford.

Burdened with seven other bookings and 2-2 on aggregate, the game went into extra-time when really everyone should have just gone home for a cold shower. Five minutes into the first half, Ford put Oxford in front for the first time heading in Mark Angel’s cross, Martin Aldridge extended the lead, finishing off a neat passing move two minutes before the break.

With four minutes remaining Adams made it 3-2, but while Norwich had a chance of coming back, both sides were too busy trying to scratch each other’s eyes out to really care.

Oxford advanced into the next round to face Sheffield Wednesday but not before having to engage in an extended game of pushing and shoving as they left the pitch.