The 2023/24 L1 Matchday Thread

JonnyBiscuits

I think the principle of “that point will look better if it’s part of a win-draw-win sequence” is reasonable logic, I guess the problem is when that is deployed as an attempt to defer criticism of a disappointing performance and/or result.

It’s the same as the “just wait until we have everyone back from injury” thing… a) that never happens because players always get injured, and b) if you DO end up with all your players back from injury, you have suddenly put yourself under greater, potentially undue pressure. Deferring any criticism of the Wycombe game until Tuesday night suddenly makes the Northampton game feel bigger for the manager and the players, and I’m not sure we’re robust enough yet to thrive under that kind of self-applied pressure.

This isn’t new to Buckingham nor is it exclusive to Oxford - it’s just the endless cycle of post-match football noise from managers/supporters/media.

I guess I’m just quite simplistic - I’d rather managers/players/media just turned round and said that “that was crap” when it was crap.

brinyhoof

TrevorAylottsHeadband I get the psychology behind that. Breaking the season up in to smaller chunks presumably makes it less overwhelming. But I think this new two game mentality encourages mediocrity and satisfaction with drawing games we could/should win if promotion is being taken seriously. It’s a very risky strategy if indeed we have one.

JonnyBiscuits

Not saying that the Wycombe game was crap btw, I have no idea, I wasn’t there and was also barely listening when it was on the radio.

JonnyBiscuits

I’ll never understand this apparent epidemic of belief in modern football that you’re safer from risk when the ball is deep in your own half near your own goal.

By far and away our biggest issue for me is a lack of killer instinct to ramp up the tempo on poor teams. We’ve no urgency to move the ball forward.

To begin with, Bodin and Rodrigues were dropping in to collect the ball from defenders and it created space and we immediately created chances. Northampton adjusted to that by marking them more closely, which should then have created more space for other attacking players, but when they started being marked, Bodin and Rodrigues suddenly stopped coming to the get the ball.

At one point Murphy came to get it from the defenders and within seconds we created a chance.

Midfielders and attackers just standing and watching our defenders in possession is what leads to the pedestrian pace and the lack of attacking threat.

I have no problem with what we’re trying to do particularly, but parts of the machinery are rarely doing the things they need to do to make that happen.

Either way, we completely outplayed Northampton and could/should have been out of sight, but because of that lack of urgency or killer instinct, we allowed a situation where mistakes cost us.

brinyhoof

I’m trying to stay positive about our current performances but it’s becoming nigh impossible. Ultimately we seem to be in a lose-lose scenario and it’s not going to get better until (hey, sports fans) we start winning consistently.

Looking across social media there seems to be broadly two camps; those who like technical football and the eternal stats and analysis this brings, and those who want us to show a bit of spirit, something unusual, spontaneous.

The former is what we are currently enjoying/enduring - corporate, PowerPoint football straight from the City Group playbook. Playing around at the back, looking for an opening, unsurprisingly impossible when at times we play a 5-0-5 formation. Some people love it. Possession-based, straight off the spreadsheets. But it’s tedious, isn’t it? And, whadyaknow, we don’t really have the players capable of playing this type of football well because, hey, we have third division-quality players in a third division team. So, for whatever reason, tactics or lack of footballing intelligence, Bodin/Rod Regis stop dropping back to collect a short pass and Brannagan finds himself playing in between the CBs as he rightly doesn’t trust either of them to have to play a necessary long ball. Necessary because we suddenly have no one whatsoever in midfield. Players get nervous, fans get nervous. And we end up making the mistakes that cost us last night and in other matches.

The latter includes the odd glimmer of skill and instinct that breaks the data analysis and formulas e.g. Murphy’s goal last night. When we realise that, hmm, Northampton are actually a bit shit and we can score quite easily. Something which was either forgotten or deliberately stopped after Murphy scored.

I’m not ‘down with modern football’ (well, I am a bit) but my biggest issue from last night and other recent matches is just how bloody boring we are and, as was touched on a couple of podcasts ago, it’s no wonder the stadium is a morgue given there is so little to cheer. The odd exciting moment punctuating minute upon tedious minute does not get the blood pumping and it’s obvious people are voting with their feet, their frustration, yawns and yes, negativity.

The club needs to wake up to this fast. It’s not long before season ticket renewals will be on their radar and given how tight money is for most, perhaps some or even a significant chunk of fans will decide that they can get better value from their shrinking entertainment budget elsewhere.

daleoufc89

brinyhoof I would say the biggest thing is a lack of identity.

Yes, under LM everything was very precise but there was a clear direction.

I love Des (and am certainly not in the out camp) but struggle to see that identity in how he wants his teams to set up. That should be all the more clear now given all then returning players.

Of course it’s frustrating but feel we were overachieving under LM but obviously the drop-off is slightly concerning.

JonnyBiscuits

I don’t disagree with any of that as a broad principle but I do actually think, with some fairly obvious and not especially major adjustments, we could be winning games pretty comfortably, and be relatively entertaining while doing it.

JonnyBiscuits

JonnyBiscuits I don’t disagree with any of that as a broad principle but I do actually think, with some fairly obvious and not especially major adjustments, we could be winning games pretty comfortably, and be relatively entertaining while doing it.

Adjustments not yet made.

brinyhoof

Yes, the first 10 minutes yesterday proved that, I agree. But the fear sets in, I think from the constraints directed by DB. I can’t see another explanation.

We do have some great players but only Cam and Josh seem to be thinking fuck it, I’m doing what feels right.

oxblogger

Match wrap | Oxford United 2 Northampton Town 2

‘Possession football is the orthodoxy and benchmark that teams aspire to, it can be devastatingly effective and cataclysmically dull.’

https://oxblogger.co.uk/2024/02/21/match-wrap-oxford-united-2-northampton-town-2/

brinyhoof

Ha, it’s almost as if I sit with @oxblogger at the Kassam! I’ll await a blog post next time I try and articulate something even half as eloquent.

brinyhoof

I’m not sure I fully understand the ‘over-achieving under LM argument’ tbh. Again, this is based on stats and data which feels ironic. I would say instead that LM was only just starting out as our coach and was so good at his job he managed to make our team a real force, playing to the strengths of both individuals and the collective. Yes, he was heavily backed in the transfer window but he got every signing pretty much right.

There is every chance LM would have continued to do a great job and strengthened even further in January. We only need to look at Leicester to understand that ‘over-achieving’ can continue for the course of a season. Or Luton last year. Or Porto in 2004. Or dozens of examples of clubs punching above their weight and succeeding. One of which is us in the early-mid 80s. So to say there would have been a drop-off under LM is, in my opinion, a way of excusing what we are seeing now.

I would suggest that if LM over-achieved then this only lends weight to an argument that DB can’t get the same level of performance from the same players. From the starting XI on Tuesday, only Bennett and Cumming have come in since LM left. And I would argue Cumming is better than Beadle, so what has happened? I’m not anti-DB but I’m also not sure for how long we should accept that we have, as you say, no identity which then impacts on style, tactics, formations, etc.

Maybe its actually the club that over-achieved by securing the services of LM, albeit for a few months?

JonnyBiscuits

If we’re drawing comparisons, Liam Manning is, right now, a better and more experienced EFL manager than Des Buckingham. I’m not sure it’s much more complicated than that.

Whether he is a better manager than Des can ever become (or can become in at timeframe that is acceptable to OUFC), remains to be seen.

I will say in Des’s defence that during the first half of his tenure so far, we were a bit shit or bust with regard to our results, and we aren’t any more.

More recently - while it has led to us being very dreary to watch at times - our worst results are “games we should have won but only drew”.

That seems like progress on “completely outplayed in every area of the pitch and comprehensively beaten by a vastly superior side” which was how our worst results went under him to begin with.

This is a long-winded way of saying, I think he’s slowly learning and/or turning us around into a side that’s difficult to beat, with the next logical step being - hopefully - turning us into a side that carries attacking threat and is good at winning games.

With any of this stuff, only time will tell if those “hopeful” next logical steps are ones that he’s aware of and capable of executing, but in the meantime, he’s only been here three months.

brinyhoof

We’ve only been comprehensively outplayed by Peterborough and Bristol Rovers in the league I would say. Derby perhaps, Cov in the cup. This is my frustration with ‘games we should have won’ because with the right encouragement and tactics to utilise our potential attacking force, we should be beating mid-table mediocre teams like Northampton, Wycombe, Reading, etc. as we did against Fleetwood, Exeter, Shrewsbury, Lincoln.

I estimate we have dropped 13 points since LM left, based on matches we should have been capable of winning or drawing. That would mean 70 points and second place. I appreciate its not as simple as that. Maybe I just need to reset my expectations.

JonnyBiscuits

We nearly got relegated last season.

JonnyBiscuits

JonnyBiscuits And I know there was more to that than how it looks on paper.

I do, genuinely, have a bit of concern at the sense of entitlement that has crept in across the board in terms our our levels of expectation, based on what was in essence, simply a good start to the season.

I know we’re chucking a lot of money at it, but as Everton and Chelsea have shown in recent years, it isn’t just as simple as that equalling success.

I also still think everyone is wildly underestimating quite how disruptive a manager upping sticks and walking away after 20-odd games and six weeks into a season is.

Any manager, all managers, require at least a season before you can really get a sense of what they’re about.

He’s been here three months. I really think we all need to be a bit more patient and get off the panic button, because it really doesn’t help anybody.

TrevorAylottsHeadband

JonnyBiscuits Agree with a lot you say here. We finished 19th last season and a good chunk of fans are getting pissy because we’re not strolling towards automatic promotion. This against a backdrop where all sane observers agreed that it was a three window fix. We’ve had two and the squad is light years better than it was 8 months ago.

Des has got to have the time to find his feet in the league. His career to date shows that he has something and those saying he is out of his depth are, frankly, idiots. As mentioned, the disruption of a manager change, along with losing an assistant manager and analyst, shouldn’t be downplayed, especially when there seems to have been issues with replacing the latter two. Manning had a preseason with the bulk of the squad; Des has had to hit the ground running with a group of players he largely doesn’t know that was always going to be tricky.

That said, he does need to learn from mistakes quickly, and there have been learning points from games which don’t seem to have been, er, learnt.

I’d also agree with the point about the tempo in games, and pressing the advantage when we have it. When I have time, I’ll take a look at how many points have been either won or lost very late on in games (after 80 mins) - my feeling is that we have dropped quite a few.

Thankfully, I think most of us on here are fairly level headed and recognise that it would be insane to bin Des off now. At the very least, he needs to see this season out. We are still in the playoffs and, again, having regard to where we were 8 months ago, that’s a huge step forward.

brinyhoof

I’m not panicking, just trying to make sense of it all and discussion on this forum is the best option I have to do that day-to-day. I’ve rarely come away from matches with a predominant feeling of boredom, regardless of what the result was or could have been, so I’m getting my thoughts out and appreciating the responses.

JonnyBiscuits

brinyhoof Oh, I know you aren’t, sorry - I was talking more broadly about the wider fanbase. Others definitely are panicking.

There was somebody near us booing when we were winning 2-1. If anything is going to cause an overly cautious, tedious, risk averse style of football, it’s fear of being booed by your home supporters when you’re winning.

brinyhoof

JonnyBiscuits we had the pleasure of the ‘I hate Wycombe more than I love Oxford’ fella sat in front of us on Tuesday. He’s the worst (or best?) mood hoover going so maybe that was a factor.

JonnyBiscuits

But as I said before - my biggest frustration is the mad belief that holding onto the football in your own half is the least risky option.

JonnyBiscuits

brinyhoof I really want to meet him.

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