Absolutes hang round your neck like a noose. After the Plymouth game I said we were watching the best football we’d seen from an Oxford team in over 30 years. I stand by that, but even before Saturday’s 3-2 reverse to Barnet, I was thinking that a statement like that needed careful qualification.

Firstly, I’m comparing five divisions of English football over 30 years. This is never going to be an exact science. The Conference promotion season was more enjoyable than most of our Championship campaigns, but were our non-leaguers a better team? Probably not. Would the Milk Cup winning team have beaten today’s vintage? Well, yes. But, as memorable as the Milk Cup was, our time in Division 1 (i.e. the Premier League) was characterised by a lot of struggle and a large number of defeats.

I can’t remember a period in which we’ve been presented with so many promotion challengers including a derby and a top of the table clash, and not only coped with it home and away, but coped with it with such panache.

Football has become an enjoyable thing to do again, which is remarkable because last season was the most stultifying experience. I didn’t got to Barnet, partly because of last season. When we were planning some time away in October towards the end of last season, I knew I was flying blind in terms of fixtures. The chances were that I’d be missing a home game and it didn’t bother me at all. What’s worse is that I’ve never felt like that before, last year I missed a home game in order to casually meet up with friends for a coffee. I haven’t done that before, missing games used to be restricted only to weddings and annual holidays. So as good as it’s been this season, last year was as terrible as it ever was. We don’t really know, still, which is the real Appleton team.

And this is the rub, ‘the best football in 30 years’ is a period of just fourteen games of which I’ve seen just 7. Jim Smith’s double title winners of 1984 and 1985 kept that kind of form going for two years, losing just two games at The Manor in 24 months. Promotion is brutal; by definition everyone that matters picks up points every week. You have to win to stand still; when others slip up, you have to win to gain advantage. It’s relentless.

The Barnet result reminds us of that fact; that any lapse of concentration will prove costly no matter who the opposition are, both in the context of a game and the context of the season. As good as the opening 14 games have been, we’ve got to keep this going for more than 30 more if we’re to achieve anything. It may be good for the defeat to Barnet to happened now, rather than in the middle of this month because it’s an early wake up call that there’s no slacking. It also puts the pressure on to get something out of Stevenage and that might be just what we need to focus the mind. It’s a sobering reminder that the coming weeks aren’t going to be easier than the last few games, just a different kind of difficult.

Winning is usually a minimum requirement when you’re playing Barnet. Even with a world class midfielder in their ranks. We laboured to the win on Tuesday, which seems about par for the current course. Perhaps we need to accept that?

I remember seasons where we were good; ’83, ’84. I remember seasons when we were good, then bad; under Ian Atkins. I remember seasons when we were bad and then good; such as the 1996 promotion season. I even remember the odd season when we were just all bad. I cannot remember a season where we were bad whilst being good.

Looking at our points total, we fell behind last year’s run rate during the six game losing streak back in September. After that we’ve pretty much kept pace with last year. Given our current form, and the poor form we showed towards the end of last season, we could easily end up with a better points total. By that purely objective measure; progress will have been made.

It doesn’t really feel like that, of course. Some of that is down to mindset. Take Tuesday, for example, you could say we missed a hatful of chances, or you could say that we battered them. Michael Raynes’ goal was either a lucky break, or a deserved, if very late, breakthrough.

Barnet aren’t a great side, but I was quite impressed with Edgar Davids. Admittedly, him joining Barnet is, for him, the equivalent of playing for my works’ six-a-side team; something to do to keep himself fit, but comes from a particularly diva-ish era of Dutch football and doesn’t have to do it. I’m sure there are clubs across Europe and the middle east willing to offer him managerial and coaching positions simply on the fact he’s one of the most recognisable faces in world football. Instead he’s taken on this ramshackle project; rather like my ambition to set up a fully Subbuteo stadium in my shed one day. It’s not as if he’s come in a Di Canio-esque way and demanded that the club bankrupt itself to satisfy his own personal ambitions.

The bloke next to me, whose considered assessment of Davids was that he was particularly small, claimed that he didn’t do much in the first half, but it was his crisp, simple and particularly efficient passing that gave Barnet their shape. While we did manage to crack the code to their game on several occasions, I suspect without Davids the chances would have been easier and more frequent and the goals would have come earlier. His quality was demonstrated through the odd sight of the attacking Alfie Potter struggling to take the ball off the the defensive Davids.

It was the agricultural intervention of Andy Whing that indirectly gave us the win. You can have all the quality in the world, but the last thing you need when you’re running on a pair of 40 year old legs is to have them clattered into.

Thereafter Barnet’s shape began to fall apart. Davids demonstrated admirable fitness throughout, both tracking back and supporting the odd Barnet attack. But the Whing challenge seemed to knock a lot of Davids’ vigour out of him. The Barnet manager readily admitted that his side switched off in injury time; which was illustrated by the sight of 8 of his team clustering around the front post when Liam Davis’ cross was clearly gong long.

The reaction wasn’t euphoric. With the goal breaking twice and over six minutes of injury time, many had decided to call it a night. Those of us left, perhaps, were the hardened few who have become largely anaesthetised to the vagaries of our form. We’ll be there whether we’re rubbish or brilliant.

For now, our form has the oddest quality; it is both poor, or perhaps that should be dour, whilst winning. Something that Chris Wilder alluded to being a necessity given the state of the pitch. Chris Wilder and Ian Lenagan are paid to win games, which was the general message in the programme criticising the boo-boys. In all likelihood this isn’t going to change any time soon due to our current circumstances. Perhaps, for now, we need to be happy being bad.