The 2023/24 L1 Matchday Thread

oxblogger

JonnyBiscuits The bloke next to me said they normally protest in the 16th minute, just as that came around they got a corner. I might have been me, but there was a weird shift in mood, almost like they weren’t sure whether to do the protest or hold back to allow the corner to be taken. Like you say, it was just part of their celebrations because they had a few tennis balls knocking about.

oxblogger

JonnyBiscuits Agree, I’d go further and say Wycombe is. By the same token that we have no recent shared history with Reading, we have loads with Wycombe. Plus, it’s much more fun to lean into the scratchiness of the whole relationship than to pretend they’re just another club.

brinyhoof

oxblogger *non-league Wycombe.

JonnyBiscuits

oxblogger I concur. I spent several years on twitter enacting an in-plain-sight guerrilla campaign to let everyone know Wycombe was a derby. I meant every word of it, which made even more enjoyable when people misconstrued it as irony.

oxblogger

brinyhoof In the same vein as 1990 being ten years ago?

brinyhoof

oxblogger and the recently opened M40.

oxblogger

Match wrap | Reading 1 Oxford United 1

’Ciaron Brown possesses a maverick quality, you get a sense he’s not playing football to achieve technical perfection but to avenge the death of a distant relative. He broke the system to make it 1-0.

https://oxblogger.co.uk/2023/12/13/match-wrap-reading-1-oxford-united-1/

Gingermoods

Completely agree with this, I’ve been going 34 years and Reading mean nothing to me. This rivalry is a thing of the past really and that’s fine. Football moves on.

JonnyBiscuits

PREDICTION ZONE

OXFORD 1 (HARRIS) - 0 BURTON

Predicting that neither Bodin nor Rodney Regis will pass the late fitness tests, so:

          Harris
    Murphy      Mills
        Brannagan
    McEachran McGuane
Bennet Brown Moore Stevens
         Beadle

If Bodin is fit, he’ll be on the bench. If Rodney is fit, he’ll replace Brannagan who’ll drop back and replace McEachran.

PREDICTION ZONE ENDS

oxblogger

Match wrap | Oxford United 3 Burton Albion 0

’In the scramble, Finn Stevens arrived like a second wave attack in a 1970’s kung fu movie; all fury, a sunrise bandana and a machete in each hand. Some lunacy to bring a bit of humanity back into the game.'

https://oxblogger.co.uk/2023/12/17/match-wrap-oxford-united-3-burton-albion-0/

JonnyBiscuits

My favourite* bit of the game was when we were 1-0 up and third in the league and some of our fans found cause to boo the team during play.

What was that all about…? Unwarranted sense of expectation and entitlement following a good start to the season?

LeftSider

JonnyBiscuits I think your reasoning is far too generous.

I’d look closer to pig-thick-pricks to find the answer.

JonnyBiscuits

We were discussing during the game how much Rodrigues’s personality drives his play. It’s a joy to watch a player make the game all about him and to have the ability to back that up. While they’re very different personalities and players, it reminds me of how much Chris Maguire personality elevated his game, and made everything circle around him.

Pertinent to our very recent history, @Gingermoods observed how the modern game often edits out the space for that individualism.

TrevorAylottsHeadband

LeftSider A more accurate analysis, I feel. Booing your own side because they haven’t created an opportunity with a passage of play, so have recycled the ball to start again is a special kind of, er, special…

brinyhoof

TrevorAylottsHeadband plenty of moaning and shouting in SSU too. One fella yelling ‘terrible’ over and again. Pretty much the mentality of that pseudo-intellectual tw*t who calls WATG. Watches football in one dimension (GOALS) but talks quite nicely and calls young Jerome ‘sweetheart’ so gets on air. But very much firmly in the thick-as-pig-shit category.

As I said to @oxblogger yesterday, when we were dominated games like that at the Manor we chanted “we’re gonna score in a minute”. But now? What’s happened in the last 20 years so that performances like that get booed? Is it a societal thing, an Oxford thing?

JonnyBiscuits

Well yes, I was working with that as a mutually understood starting point 😄

JonnyBiscuits

brinyhoof But now? What’s happened in the last 20 years so that performances like that get booed? Is it a societal thing, an Oxford thing?

We were discussing this. I think partly societal. Everything has conflict and blame as a starting point these days. And I think it’s more recently than 20 years. There’s been a shift in football crowd attitudes since the pando (not necessarily caused by). An increase in aggressive and abusive behaviour, a reported increase in cocaine usage and heavy drinking etc etc. We definitely have our share of that crowd. I dipped back into twitter briefly and a number of our supporters who definitely fit that description were among the most aggressively critical of the performance (clearly posting while incredibly drunk).

LeftSider

I’ve got a spare adult ticket for the stand behind the goal for today’s match. I’ve advertised it on Twitter, too. Anyone interested?

brinyhoof

Another piss poor away performance and another defeat. We looked clueless for most of the match. Midfielders struggling to adapt to whatever the new system is supposed to be, Brannagan especially. Plus strange substitutions, bizarre tactics, no goal threat except from Murphy.

That one is on DB and it’s all rather worrying.

brinyhoof

brinyhoof this was a bit knee jerk but I do worry that we are in square peg round hole territory again. What was the formation? McGuane was overrun, Cam looked lost. Ruben and Harris looked disconnected to me.

Did murph get injured? He played so much better than mills in the first half I thought.

Joe_Citrone

Looks like one is imminent, but I think it’s really poor that it’s taken a month to get an assistant in for Des. I know one fell through, but that can’t have been helpful as he’s been trying to implement his ideas in the first few weeks.

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