Home Match Day Thread 20/02/2024 L1: OUFC v Northampton Town

dickwalton1964 said:

I raised this point last week and in my opinion it is definitely reflective of the football. Look how the atmosphere went up a bit last night in the second half when we were a bit more front foot. I’m SSL and around me people were just staring blankly out there in the first half - no ones calling out anyone, no ones questioning the ref etc, people just looked fed up with it. Occasionally there was the odd dissenting voice aimed at Buckingham but that was about it.

Interestingly, I’ve found myself at both Man City and Liverpool home games in past 18 months and those atmospheres mirror what they’re watching as well. City is honestly like being in a morgue 85% of the time, then when they eventually reach the final third and quicken the play, the crowd come to life. Liverpool though is far more raucous from the first to last minute, the crowd right up for it and urging the players on, Klopp driving them forward. When Liverpools full backs have it the crowd rise in anticipation of something happening - a bit like we used to be when Baldock would get on the ball.

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I’m also in SSL and the abuse hurled at the team and Des was horrible. Some of the people by me were not staring by any means. The language was foul and there were young children by those shouting. Do these idiots really believe they’re helping the team by such a torrent of abuse.

holdsteady said:

We as fans not singing has nothing to do with the football we play, we were terrible under Patterson in the conference that season, 5 thousand crowd and we still made much more noise than we do now. Just got an old and ageing fan base now, might be more people but the number of geriatrics in the east stand makes me, at 45, feel young. Most people in their fifties and above, apart from moaning at the ref/manager/players/football/life in general don't make a lot of noise, which is fair enough as I can't see me "going f*****g mental" at 65 years old, probably be to tired from climbing the stairs. Add in its more family groups and you have the recipe for sterility.

Our only decent atmosphere this season came away to Leyton Orient which was a lads day out type crowd, mostly groups of blokes who had been drinking, home games are nothing like that so you won't see much of an improvement.

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Agree with all of that but why isn't more being done to get the younger generation going? When was the last time we done kids for a quid for example. We just act like a club going nowhere in too many departments which lets down the areas we are doing well in. The website being down for this long just highlights how amateur we are.

Well don’t know what game you were seeing but Long played well last night.

Lots of attacking endeavour. He’s clearly become the 2024 Matt Murphy for many.

Seen in the round, ie the current century, and based on current position in the pyramid , we’ve only had one better season. So don’t get the grim feel to the forum. Or the casual slagging of players during the game. At all.

Not many supporters apply context these days , their mood varies from result to tesult. Its quite sad.

Des’s non up and at ‘em demeanor doesn’t help though.

chromeyellow said:

Those suggesting that Murphy id only performing because his contract is up at the end of the season have a very strange idea of what motivates a professional footballer. This is the first time he has been selected

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The last time he played anything remotely close to this was leading up to the Arsenal FA Cup game. He’s not daft.

I’m glad he’s (finally) weighing in but I’m under no illusions as to what might be behind that. It could be Des, but players who have truly burst in to form under him are limited - Murphy and Harris perhaps? Harris is profiting from the hopeful style of play, it suits him. Other than that, success stories with individuals are very limited so you do wonder…

I think if we missed the play offs and then shackled ourselves to Murphy for 2 more years (unless on terms I discussed on his thread recently), that might finish me off!!

This is how we were looking when Sam played that weird backpass. In injury time. At 2-1! We had every opportunity to go 4-5-1 as they pushed up and chased the game. Just criminal.



Look where Greg Leigh is on the other flank, bent over exhausted high up the pitch from an overlap he shouldn't be making at this point. No safe option for Long to fall back on. Rubbish decision making by individuals cost us but we sure raised the stakes by not doing the basics.

Northampton commentator spent most of the game saying "Oxford hold the ball and frustrate us". Then at THIS moment "that's a bizarre pass back from Long from inside the cobblers half to his keeper who bombs it down field to no great purpose."

Lots of talk here about defensive problems but one other gripe I had last night is how often our attacking players chose speculative long shots over keeping the pressure up and forcing errors from our opponents defence. I know that without a bunch of worldies this season we'd be mid table but it's not a sustainable strategy and there must have been at least 5 times last night where we had them under pressure only to fire one over the bar and give them a chance to breathe and reset.

Small margins and overall much better performance in many ways. It's all about doing the basic stuff now to shift those margins in our favour.

Bigdwoolly said:

On a different note - people seem very angry/sad and a few are saying they're not enjoying it at the moment. All reasonable emotions, but if I were them I'd consider not going for a while - if you're only going to enjoy a game if we win, you're going to be miserable more often than not.

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That’s an incredibly linear view of the situation. Thousands and thousands of people have been going to games week in, week out for years and decades at a time, and I’m pretty sure they don’t do that solely because all they crave or care about is three points. They’re at the wrong club if that’s the only motivator. It’s really not about that.

I don’t enjoy being at games from the first minute these days. I didn’t enjoy the Wigan game last week even though we won 4-2, and I didn’t enjoy anything about last night even when we were winning on two separate occasions. I was talking to my mum on Sunday night and actually winced when I realised that I had not one, but two home games to attend this week. The football is flat, the atmosphere is flatter and it doesn’t feel like anybody who sits anywhere near me is any more arsed or inspired than I am at the moment. It’s a total apathy fest. It genuinely feels like almost nobody wants to be there at the moment. It’s people reporting for duty because “that’s what you do”.

I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t know whether anybody does, to be honest.

Overall I thought it was a performance lacking assuredness. Too many players seemed a unsure as to exactly what was expected of them. When Negru first came into the team earlier in the season, he was decisive and confident. Now, however, indecision is written across his face almost every time he has the ball. I also don't think it worked with Bodin and Rodrigues both playing as attacking midfielders. Neither seemed to know when to come short meaning far too often there was a massive gap between our defence + Brannagan and the rest of the team, which I think was at least partly why it was passed across the backline and back to Cummings so often. Clogging the space in front of Harris also prevented the latter from getting into the game and as a result he was largely anonymous.

I do think some questions need to be asked of Des, but for me the signs point to the absence of a proper Assistant to get his message across to the players. I think Des has on occasion demonstrated his ability to strategise and adapt his tactics, but it's a lot to ask for him to do that side of things and then make sure every player knows what they're supposed to be doing in the space of a few days. I hate to keep harking back, but under Manning and Hogg every player seemed to know exactly what was required of them, even when there was a significant change of gameplan e.g. Stevenage away. I obviously don't know exactly how it worked, but it's easy to imagine Manning pouring over the game film and data and producing a gameplan, and Hogg drilling it into the players. Who is doing Hogg's role now?

I also have huge concerns about our game management. That's the third time in the last four home games that we've thrown away leads at home. Whether this is down to the players, manager, coaching staff, or a combination of all three, I don't know. FWIW I thought the subs made by Des, on the whole, were good last night, so it's hard to point the finger at that. I just keep going back to indecisiveness. It needed someone, on the pitch or off it, to take control, and we just don't seem to have that at the moment.

One final point of what has unfortunately been a negative one on the whole, the atmosphere really has got truly, truly horrendous. Whatever you try to put it down to, there just seems to be so much apathy around the stands. Can the Ultras come out of retirement for the last 6 home games?!

I think currently Murphy is delighted to be picked and playing and to be approaching what he’s capable of as a footballer.

It can’t be easy when your twin brother is in the Premier League and you’re not playing at all , being hung out to dry by Karl Robinson or being shouted at by angry old geezers in the SSU

Steve Gilbert said:

Of all the players you’ve decided to slate the one who only played for 15 minutes?!

As for people blaming Long for the 2nd goal, yes it was a bad/odd decision but the goal wasn’t scored until 26 seconds later after that pass. In that time there were at least 3 changes to get rid of the ball.

That isn’t even taking into account that it should have been offside.

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Re Long. Yes to a degree, but he took us from a postition of control in their half to our keeper being under pressure in our half with 1 bizarre pass, from then we didn't regain control. So yes, there was intervening play, but his action took us from front to back foot.

On my phone at the moment but wondering how many for Oxford that final team we had on the pitch had? How many games in Total come to that . Not many experienced players on the pitch

Has anyone noticed that in the past couple of midweek games, what I presume are a group of local kids, walk around the stadium shining a green laser into the crowd? It's happened at a few games now, and last night it went directly into our eyes in the SSU.

JimSmith2 said:

Er, he wasn’t so great his second time round was he?

I am the truth teller on this forum. Someone has to be.

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F8ck me - the last thing we need on this forum is more "truth" tellers

RyanioBirdio said:

That’s an incredibly linear view of the situation. Thousands and thousands of people have been going to games week in, week out for years and decades at a time, and I’m pretty sure they don’t do that solely because all they crave or care about is three points. They’re at the wrong club if that’s the only motivator. It’s really not about that.

I don’t enjoy being at games from the first minute these days. I didn’t enjoy the Wigan game last week even though we won 4-2, and I didn’t enjoy anything about last night even when we were winning on two separate occasions. I was talking to my mum on Sunday night and actually winced when I realised that I had not one, but two home games to attend this week. The football is flat, the atmosphere is flatter and it doesn’t feel like anybody who sits anywhere near me is any more arsed or inspired than I am at the moment. It’s a total apathy fest. It genuinely feels like almost nobody wants to be there at the moment. It’s people reporting for duty because “that’s what you do”.

I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t know whether anybody does, to be honest.

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I think you're assuming everyone around you has the same feelings as you.

My point is, the answer is right there in front of you. Stop going for a little while, if it's making you miserable then try something else. In my experience this is a good rule for life in general.

Bigdwoolly said:

I think you're assuming everyone around you has the same feelings as you.

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I think you’re equally assuming they definitely don’t.

Maybe you’re right.

RyanioBirdio said:

I think you’re equally assuming they definitely don’t.

Maybe you’re right.

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It would be pretty weird if everyone around you had the same feelings.

Strange people are saying the football is flat when two new signings combined to score one of the best goals I’ve seen for a long time

chromeyellow said:

Strange people are saying the football is flat when two new signings combined to score one of the best goals I’ve seen for a long time

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Not entirely sure that you can take one good moment (although there *were* some others as well) and infer that means that the rest of the match was a joy!

Nadi- said:

Not fully up with the changes to the rules on offside these days, but with Long being the plank to last touch the ball. Does that not rule out Hoskins from being offside

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Long put us under pressure with a ridiculous back pass but it was their defender who launched it forwards. Hoskins is coming back from chasing down Long's back pass, is at least 30 yards offside and Negru has to adjust his run to get round him so he's interfering with play. My understanding was if the defender tries to play it it's fair game, which is already nonsense, but Negru hadn't even done that yet. Stand to be corrected but I think it's a horrendous decision. If you're being really generous you could say Negru changing his run got him caught under the ball as well so he couldn't clear it but that's well into the territory of making too many excuses for him.

That's not to excuse the defending either which was hopeless, but by the same token hopeless defending doesn't excuse a terrible refereeing call.

Win Saturday v Orient and we are in a healthy position.

Fail to win & think it’ll turn a little toxic.

Kamal said:

Has anyone noticed that in the past couple of midweek games, what I presume are a group of local kids, walk around the stadium shining a green laser into the crowd? It's happened at a few games now, and last night it went directly into our eyes in the SSU.

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maybe bring it up with one of the ousp lot?