The week unwrapped

Damn you Oxford United, just as we thought the season was cooked, we go to the League leaders with a massively changed side, go down to 10 men and still come away with a point. 

After the 0-0 draw with Coventry on Saturday, the gap to safety now stands at four points, which suddenly feels bridgeable again. Particularly as West Brom, Blackburn and Sheffield Wednesday are all still to come to The Kassam before the end of the season.

First though, is to establish some kind of run, starting tonight with Norwich City, which isn’t the only crucial game of the night with both Leicester and West Brom also in action. Squeaky bum time.

Canaryfacts

As seems to always be the case, Norwich arrive at The Kassam, in a much healthier state than they were during the catastrophic mess they created at the start of the season. After a calamitous period under Liam Manning – including 11 defeats in 15 games – The Canaries have found their feet under Philippe Clemente. 

Recent form is much improved with six wins in their last nine games including a win over Coventry at the end of January. Although still only 17th, they’re not realistically seen as a relegation-threatened side anymore. 

I suppose the positive in all that is that we won’t under-estimate them and that our form against good sides (who we don’t underestimate) has been good. Still, we’ll do well to pick up three points.

Football friend | Oli Johnson

Oli Johnson didn’t really have a football career. It was more a series of fortunate and unfortunate events. Rather than the vaulted academies of English football, his route into professional football was via non-league backwaters including Nostell Minor’s Welfare and Emley.

His opportunity to play professionally came when Stockport County picked him up after impressing in a behind closed doors friendly in 2008. Successes were moderate, but it was enough for Norwich City to sign him in 2010. 

Norwich were in the doldrums and had dropped to the third tier for the first time in fifty years. In many ways, Johnson’s fate was sealed before he arrived. On the opening day of the 2009/10 season, Norwich were thrashed 7-1 at home to Colchester. The humiliation of the scoreline was only multiplied by their new reality that Colchester represented something of a derby. 

It sealed manager Bryan Gunn’s fate, who was replaced by Paul Lambert, the Colchester manager who’d masterminded their destruction on the opening day. Johnson’s arrival the following January came as Lambert was transforming the club into a promotion force.

Despite the opening day humiliation, Norwich went on to win the League One title, then followed it up by finishing second in The Championship and being promoted to the Premier League. Johnson, who Lambert had originally seen as a League One wild card, was now on the margins of a Premier League squad full of established professionals. His long term prospects at Carrow Road were limited.

After a loan spell at Yeovil, Johnson’s contract was terminated in January 2012 and ten days later he signed for Oxford. After an inconsistent opening to the season, Chris Wilder went on one of his customary signing burps, bringing in a raft of new players and loans including Johnson.

The new players and Wilder’s strained relationship with James Constable, who’d turned down a move to Swindon during the January window, didn’t help. Form didn’t improve and we bobbed around just outside the play-offs. Although the season looked set to peter out, we had one key objective: to complete the double over Swindon. 

Despite Oxford’s 2-1 win at The County Ground the previous September, Paolo Di Canio’s side were flying towards the title and on an 11 game winning run. As the game approached, he embarked on a campaign of disruption; trying to sign James Constable, claiming Constable was a Swindon fan and saying that the home defeat had inspired his team. Wilder used the jibes to motivate his players by hanging his quotes on the changing room wall.

Then, a week before the game Oxford descended into an injury crisis. Wilder’s patched up eleven fell further into crisis when James Constable was sent off for an alleged elbow after 10 minutes.

Fearing a humiliating derby drubbing, just six minutes later, a Lee Holmes free-kick was turned in by Asa Hall. Two minutes later the delirium reached fever pitch as Johnson arrived to slide in the second from Holmes’ daisy cutter cross. His ecstatic reaction is one of the great Oxford United pictures of the age. 

Oxford survived to register a famous victory and Johnson became a cult hero before fate took over again. Three days later, against Shrewsbury, having gone 2-0 up at half-time, we were leading 2-1 deep into injury time when Matt Richards lashed in the equaliser from 35 yards. The goal killed any hope of momentum for the season while Johnson began to drift out of the side. With relationships in Wilder’s changing room disintegrating, the club limped to the end of the season, finishing 9th.

Although Johnson hoped for a new contract, Wilder released him along with many of the others who he’d brought in over Christmas. The attempted mid-season transformation hadn’t worked, apart from during that glorious two minute spell in March. Johnson went on to York, before his career spluttered back into non-league, a momentary icon who will live forever in Oxford’s history.

Game: Norwich City 1 Oxford United 3

Every YouTube clip of the 1990s opens with the commentator telling us how much debt Oxford United are in. This game from November 1998 is no exception. We were £12m in debt at the time and third from bottom of the second tier. By contrast, Norwich were in third, on a seven game unbeaten run and hadn’t been beaten since the previous April.

Despite conceding after just three minutes through a baby-faced Craig Bellamy, Oxford struck back with Brian Wilsterman’s header. They took the lead on the stroke of half-time through Dean Windass, and made it 3-1 through Andy Thomson, who appeared to be wearing a roll neck jumper under his shirt, after the break.

It would all be for nothing as we were relegated and Norwich drifted to 9th, still like all Championship seasons, the unexpected moments made it all the more glorious.