The week unwrapped

It’s been a billion years since our last league game so obviously it’s all kicked off. After an expected, but fairly flaccid, 2-1 defeat to Ipswich on New Year’s Day we slipped to second bottom in the Championship.  

With relegation looming, the club have mobilised with all the precision and discipline of the Ant Hill Mob. The opening of the transfer window was launched with Sumrith ‘Tiger’ Thanakarnjanasuth’s wife posting an Instagram story of her husband showing a toddler – possibly his grandson, maybe Tyler Goodrham – a chart of all our January transfer targets. Our Championship rivals quaked.

Staying true to the chart, we’ve seen a plethora of adjustments to the squad. Louis Sibley has been shipped out to Bradford City and Luke Harris returned to Fulham. Northern Ireland international Jamie Donley has signed on loan from Tottenham, Myles Peat Harris arrived on a short-term deal and Yunus Konak has come in from Brentford. Stephan Negru has returned from Salford, Jordan Thornily from Northampton and James Golding from Crewe.

Then, through the spinning revolving door flew Matt ‘Bloomers’ Bloomfield as our new head coach. Coloured in part by his Wycombe connections and because he took Luton down (albeit with a vastly improved points-haul to his predecessor) the response was mixed. Still, he feels like a more comfortable fit in the longer term than Gary Rowett who took to the Second Tier Podcast to talk about his time at the club.

Bloomers was in the crowd for our FA Cup tie at MK Dons last Friday. Despite a ropey start and going a goal down, we stabilised and equalised through Will Lankshear before going through on penalties. In that brief moment, it almost felt like we were a normal football club.

One final honourable mention goes to work shy glovesman Simon Eastwood, who shared the latest promotional video for his wife’s new pilates business. Entitled ‘Perfect Saturday’, it involved walking the dog, drinking coffee and having brunch with friends. Sounds right up Easty’s street, after all there was no mention of things like; ‘playing football’.

Robinfacts

Bristol City seemed to have settled on being one of those entirely bog standard Championship sides; a good team producing moderate results. Back in September, when we beat them at Ashton Gate, they were hoping to go second and automatic promotion was a serious ambition. Now they’re 10^th and struggling to find the consistency that will catapult them into the play-offs.

Recent form has been patchy with four wins in ten although two of those have been away from home. As a result, it’s hard to know which Bristol City will turn up, although undoubtedly, it’ll be one of them.

Football friend | Rob Dickie

Michael Appleton had a vision, Oxford could mine the academies of the Premier League and Championship and offer its players the opportunity of senior football that would leverage them back into the senior divisions. It was a win-win, the player would get a career boost and the club could benefit from their talent and transfer fees.

It worked spectacularly well; Kemar Roofe, John Lundstram, Ryan Ledson and Joe Rothwell all benefitted from the strategy while the club benefitted from them.

It’s amazing how often managers come in to stamp their authority on a club by ignoring whatever it was that made them successful. This is exactly what Pep Clotet did, rather than continuing to build on Appleton’s foundations, he dismantled them.

In came a cosmopolitan travelling band; Ricardinho, Xemi Fernandez, Agon Mehmeti, Gino Van Kessel and Dwight Tiendelli arrived, intrigued and, in increasingly creative ways, frustrated. 

After a decent start, things spiralled off-track, Clotet was fired after a 7-0 defeat to Wigan and an even more damning 2-1 loss to Bury. Even before he was sacked, the club were mobilising; first we dipped into Reading’s academy to sign Rob Dickie and a week later we brought Cameron Brannagan in from Liverpool.

Dickie looked slightly browbeaten with slouched shoulders and a forlorn demeanour, but he had that grace that all good central defenders seem to have. With Clotet gone, Derek Fazackeley gave him his debut against Rotherham partnering John Mousinho as the club limped its way into the Karl Robinson era.

Under Robinson, in 2018/19, he partnered Curtis Nelson, but the manager struggled to square the circle between Dickie, Nelson, Mousinho and Charlie Raglan. Dickie lost his place for a run of 2 draws and six defeats in eight and our season petered out.

The following season things started to click – Shandon Baptiste, Tariqe Fosu, James Henry and Matt Taylor brought firepower to go with defensive assurance. At the turn of the year, the club were motoring with Dickie promoted to captain in place of John Mousinho. A stirring five game winning streak brought the club into the play-offs before Covid brought the season to a premature end.

It took four months to re-start with a play-off win against Portsmouth and a haunting 2-1 defeat against Wycombe at Wembley. With everyone locked down, Dickie’s contract quietly expired and he chose to move to QPR where he stayed for three years before joining Bristol City in 2023. He’s played over 100 games for The Robins and recently signed a new contract which will keep him at the club until 2028.

From the archive | Oxford United 1 Bristol City 1

Our home game against Bristol City last season was sufficiently bananas to warrant another look. It was the return of Liam Manning to The Kassam after his ignominious departure in 2023.

Manning celebrated by having two men sent off. In between, we took the lead through a sliced-miss-hit-cross-cum-shot from Greg Leigh. Mark Sykes then equalised with a cleverly worked wonder strike. Despite everything going our way, we couldn’t find a winner.