It’s often said that dealing with relegation is like dealing with a hangover. For us, it’s more like chiselling away at a crust. The success of two seasons in the Championship wasn’t that dizzying, relegation came as little surprise and it left us with other problems to deal with. The feeling is more like when a mild rot that sets after you stay in your pyjamas all day and don’t have a shower.

The club have done a deep clean of the back room; gone are Grant Ferguson, Tim Williams and Matt Bloomfield, in their place, Dusan Bogdanovic and Aaron Ramsey. The transfer window is supposed to be where we wash away the frustrations of the previous squad, but the embargo has left us mostly with the same players as last season. Transfer windows give the illusion of strengthening a squad, but even if we had the freedom to do so, we were never going to replace Will Lankshear, Stan Mills and Brian De Keersmaecker with equivalents or better. What we’re really trying to do is refresh our expectations. New players are the renewal of belief, the embargo means we’ve been left with players we know too well; their strengths, their weaknesses and their trajectory.

If you want to put your problems into perspective, visit Leicester City. The King Power Stadium is wrapped in banners celebrating their successes; the 2016 Premier League, the 2021 FA Cup, the 2000 League Cup. The banners don’t quite make it around the whole stadium, reverting to more moderate achievements of their middling women’s team on the side that faces away from the road. Still, it’s an impressive list, in a world where elites dominate and protect, in modern times, Leicester City have been one of the best clubs in the country. Now though, you could say they’re encased in that history, perhaps even entombed by it.

As part of the build-up to the game, on the big video screens, they run one of those retrospective montages of their historic moments. In the current climate, it just serves as a reminder of how far and fast they’ve fallen. Then Kasabian’s Club Foot pounds out of the PA sounding full and raw, but it’s 22 years old and Serge, the lead singer, does promotion for the band on the One Show sofa nowadays. They’ve got the Adidas kit and the gambling shirt sponsor, but it all feels a bit in the past.

The teams come out to a piercing hunting horn playing the Post Horn Gallop, a nod to them being The Foxes. It’s a funny choice, as famously foxes tend to fair badly when being chased by forty privileged bloodthirsty huntsman and a pack of dogs.

As with everything, we’ve had to choose how to respond to our problems. We could have pointed fingers and sulked, and no doubt there’s been a bit of that. Or, we could have got on with it. Some have questioned why Aaron Ramsey would bother with the trials he’s faced, given that his success as a player has probably set him up for life. The reason is that you don’t become as successful Aaron Ramsey without a sense of purpose, ambition and drive.

The challenge is to inject that into a squad battered by relegation and a summer of opprobrium. From the first whistle Peter Kioso, Kai Andrews, Jamie McDonnell, Mark Harris harry and press, pushing the home side back. There’s a Leicester City vlog on YouTube offering in-game analysis. They conclude the opening minutes have been ‘all Leicester’ and that the problem is that they need to find a creative way to deal with teams operating a low block. But it’s another example of their delusion, most of the opening minutes are played in their half.  

The pressing opens pockets of space in midfield, giving Cameron Brannagan opportunities to spray balls out to Siriki Dembele and Mo Missanga. Missanga is the preferred outlet, his running and enthusiasm is direct and infectious. After seven minutes McDonnell takes a break from bulldozering his way around midfield to release him down the right. Massinga crosses to Mark Harris to finish in his usual unemphatic way for 1-0. Back on the internet, the Leicester vlogger claims handball and laments the officials at this level. We seem more of his nostrils than the game, but we can only conclude he’s watching a parallel universe.

Leicester’s fightback is muted, it feels like their fans don’t really believe in it anyway. Simon Eastwood makes a couple of decent stops which would have been more comfortable for a younger version of himself. It’s not really an onslaught, we continue to press aggressively and release our wingers when we can. Their threat soon burns out.

At half-time Leicester’s manager Russell Martin shows his stoicism and leadership by having a nervous breakdown and making two substitutions. They nearly concede from their own kick-off after 13 seconds when Kai Andrews puts the ball narrowly wide after Harry Souter launches a long ball into Louis Page’s abdomen and releases Missanga. Literally and figuratively it’s a kick in the knackers. 

Panicking, Martin makes another double substitution to loud jeering; he’s burning his matches and drawing the ire of the frustrated home support. Increasingly, the only fear I’ve got is that I might get sunburnt in the blazing September heat.

A minute later, Brodie Spencer releases Andrews who plays it into Missanga. The pass is fractionally under-paced and on the winger’s wrong side forcing him to cut onto his right, but he remains composed and curls the ball into the net. 

The ecstasy. The euphoria of the goal, the bliss of the cushion, the catharsis of the players tumbling towards the away fans. Kioso gives a primal scream. Somewhere in the scrum is Missanga with a huge smile across his face. Cameron Brannagan anoints him with a kiss him on the cheek. He’s the first Oxford goalscorer to be born after our relegation to the Conference, if there’s ever a sign of renewal and rebirth, this is it.

It goes on, three minutes later we’re pressing again. Dembele to Andrews to Harris who finishes, this time like a striker who enjoys scoring. It’s like a rolling wave, the celebrations from the previous goal still echo from the stands as the ball hits the back of the net. Another rapturous wave crashes down the stands. In a single motion, the Leicester fans cascade towards the exits, a few hanging back to pick arguments with clouds and fresh air. Harris stands and waves at them. The humiliation is absolute, the other worldliness of being so comfortable and dominant is intoxicating.

Somewhere in the chaos, Ramsey introduces Luka Lynch as Missanga slips away. Lynch is instantly on the front foot, in fact, the first time I spot that he’s on, he’s tearing down the right angling in on goal. The Leicester players look equally startled.

With twenty minutes to go, Tyler Goodrham shakes his early season rustiness with a pinpoint pass to Lynch whose cross evades O’Donkor but reaches McDonnell for number four. The already half-empty stands squeezes a few more limp bodies towards the exit, McDonnell doesn’t quite know how to celebrate, it’s all been so impossibly easy.

The only remaining question in the game, if we can still call it that, is whether we can keep a clean sheet. It’s a dilemma for Leicester, if they don’t score then they’ve failed by every metric and can be accused of giving up, but if they do, it simply illustrates their utter hopelessness.

The stadium echoes with songs from the away end, in brief lulls in between it falls into silence, even the post-game celebrations are slightly stunted. There’s a bewilderment about the quality of the performance for a club like us and the position we’re in. We shouldn’t do that to a club like them. A procession of players, Aaron Ramsey and kit man Jonny Edmunds, are pushed into that rabbit punch celebration everyone does now. At one point it looks like everyone will get a go, they all deserve it and it means we’ll miss the worst of the traffic.

Only a lunatic would think we’ve fixed our problems, but you have to embrace days like this and let them consume you. It’s a fresher air in our lungs, more cleansing to our sore bones, a balm the open wounds. What a day.

Since you’re here…

If you like this kind of thing, why not subscribe to the free Oxblogger Newsletter here. It comes out every couple of months. If you want to write for the newsletter, the publication deadlines are in each issue.

This issue features the results of the Oxblogger Survey 2026 with ratings and predictions, we also have some commentary on our tempestuous summer and an insider view on what it takes to choose a new kit for the season.