Home Match Build-Up 02/11/2024 - Championship: Oxford United vs Swansea City

[SirAndyOfCrosby]

Wouldn't mind seeing our unbeaten at home tag go this week if it meant we won one and lost one.

Need to start picking up wins. Drawing too many games in the log run will kill us.

It really really doesn't work like that though, does it?

You try and win each match. If you can't win, you get a draw. Rinse and repeat for the next game.

Defeat tomorrow does not in any way increase our chances of winning on Tuesday.
You can win one and draw one. Or win both!

Each game is independent of each other. There is no trade off required.

I don't think I can stress that enough...

 

[DenbighYellow]

It really really doesn't work like that though, does it?

You try and win each match. If you can't win, you get a draw. Rinse and repeat for the next game.

Defeat tomorrow does not in any way increase our chances of winning on Tuesday.
You can win one and draw one. Or win both!

Each game is independent of each other. There is no trade off required.

I don't think I can stress that enough...

What I mean is that the narrative seems to be that we have been doing well recently because we haven't lost any games. I disagree.

Take the last three game week as an example. The perception (especially on Radio Ox) was that it was a good one because we went unbeaten (Pompey, Baggies & Derby), whereas I think we should be disappointed with that points haul.

IF we draw tomorrow, I can guarantee the talk will be 'still unbeaten at home', whereas in reality if we want to stay in this division, we need to beat the likes of Derby an Swansea at home.

 

[Colin B]

Wouldn't mind seeing our unbeaten at home tag go this week if it meant we won one and lost one.

Need to start picking up wins. Drawing too many games in the log run will kill us.

Strong disagree.

I never want to lose any game, and if we do it ruins either my weekend, or midweek, and I don't want to ruin either.

 

[werthersoriginal]

Wouldn't mind seeing our unbeaten at home tag go this week if it meant we won one and lost one.

Need to start picking up wins. Drawing too many games in the log run will kill us.

However if we win tomorrow we'd probably stay up by drawing all the remaining games.

 

[Eaststanding]

Wouldn't mind seeing our unbeaten at home tag go this week if it meant we won one and lost one.

Need to start picking up wins. Drawing too many games in the log run will kill us.

WTF?!
We should be looking to win, win and f****** win again! What’s wrong with some people….

 

[christenedinjericho]

It does seem a little unbelievable that we have players once again with a history of injuries as most posters on here gave KR significant pelters over this and vowed that we shouldn't really go down this route again but here we are again carrying a fifth of the squad medically. Also, to me (to you) it does seem that Cameron B has had more time in the medical room (excluding time out for his sight) than when super Karlio had him under his wing?

However, don't get me wrong, KR was so overdue in getting his marching orders but when you throw up the injury conundrums between the squads atm I don't particularly see at this point much of a difference other than Des being seemingly a lot more calm and assured between the injury situations of bringing in these players that have without doubt not had the best record of pitch playing action atm.

Nevertheless, with Desmond managing these type of situations 'better' especially when dealing with the press there are still some justified and ancient deja vu scenarios tugging away at him regarding the fitness levels of several of these signings.

There is no doubting in my mind that there will be a near future sit down at length with the recruitment team to minimise any further disruption to the squad and some unadulterated action to move on unfortunately a few of these fragile incumbents with a fresh set of targets in January. This is the standard especially for and in this league if we want to stay competitive.

Here's hoping for an absolute minimum 7 pts from the next 3 perlers and I'm awfully sorry for any inconvenience caused from my post lol.

COYY'S

 

[Gregortheox]

It’s a points accumulation business.

Privately, I think our players believe they can cause most teams serious problems…especially at home. In public, the narrative is we are little old Oxford.

In a few days we will have a better idea of where we are heading following Swansea and Hull respectively.

And let’s not forget that our draws have been against some serious serious football clubs. We are a useful side. I’m quietly confident.

 

[Siho]

Anyone got a link to Lawrence Vigoroux against Oxford? I could do with a laugh

 

[Northernyellow]

It does seem a little unbelievable that we have players once again with a history of injuries as most posters on here gave KR significant pelters over this and vowed that we shouldn't really go down this route again but here we are again carrying a fifth of the squad medically. Also, to me (to you) it does seem that Cameron B has had more time in the medical room (excluding time out for his sight) than when super Karlio had him under his wing?

However, don't get me wrong, KR was so overdue in getting his marching orders but when you throw up the injury conundrums between the squads atm I don't particularly see at this point much of a difference other than Des being seemingly a lot more calm and assured between the injury situations of bringing in these players that have without doubt not had the best record of pitch playing action atm.

Nevertheless, with Desmond managing these type of situations 'better' especially when dealing with the press there are still some justified and ancient deja vu scenarios tugging away at him regarding the fitness levels of several of these signings.

There is no doubting in my mind that there will be a near future sit down at length with the recruitment team to minimise any further disruption to the squad and some unadulterated action to move on unfortunately a few of these fragile incumbents with a fresh set of targets in January. This is the standard especially for and in this league if we want to stay competitive.

Here's hoping for an absolute minimum 7 pts from the next 3 perlers and I'm awfully sorry for any inconvenience caused from my post lol.

COYY'S

Brannagan is 28 now, so no surprise he's starting to pick up knocks. KR did have a habit of picking up injury prone players. I always got the impression that was because he kept getting excited at the player they 'could' be if they weren't permanently injured. Marcus Browne being the prime example.

 

[tonyw]

Anyone got a link to Lawrence Vigoroux against Oxford? I could do with a laugh

Here you go - about 40 seconds in.

 

[Orkney Islands Yellow]

Anyone got a link to Lawrence Vigoroux against Oxford? I could do with a laugh

I can't wait to renew acquaintances with our old mate Lawrence tomorrow!!

 

[Nadi-]

Last week has been coming for a few weeks. Better the best team in the league, teaching us a lesson. Than a mid or lower side, rubbing our face in it.
The good thing was we set ourselves up to readjust at half time, and other than a sloppy mistake. The 2nd half showed promise.

 

[Steve Gilbert]

I can't wait to renew acquaintances with our old mate Lawrence tomorrow!!

The beauty with LV is that we all know how easy it is to get in his head and once that happens he does some very stupid things.
The Jim Smith stand can be our 12th man tomorrow by really getting into giving our old friend some stick.

 

[Joey]

It does seem a little unbelievable that we have players once again with a history of injuries as most posters on here gave KR significant pelters over this and vowed that we shouldn't really go down this route again but here we are again carrying a fifth of the squad medically. Also, to me (to you) it does seem that Cameron B has had more time in the medical room (excluding time out for his sight) than when super Karlio had him under his wing?

While I agree we've taken some risks and it's currently coming back to bite us (although the three risks and Dembele all being injured at the same time is a bit of bad luck) there are some clear differences between this summer and a KR window. He was here for half a decade so had plenty of time to build a squad how he wanted it without having to scramble around and pick up the projects he seemed to so love. Des had only been here seven months and had much more work to do as we'd also been promoted so needed a better quality of player. KR cleverly avoided this issue by never achieving anything.

We'd also have gone from being one of the better teams with a promotion size budget to relative small fry with a relegation size budget. As much as we'd all have preferred proven quality and reliable players they're harder to find, we were absolutely justified in taking more risks this summer than in the league below when we were a much more attractive proposition.

All that said as we establish ourselves at this level id certainly hope we move towards the reliable types and expect we will. Probably a sense of 'needs must' this summer.

 

[Nadi-]

No argument that players get injured more often these days that they used to - for exactly the reasons you outline.

But it's also not correct to say that every winger is the same - like everything, they fit under a distribution from 'Never crocked' to 'Always crocked'

At one end, you've got someone like Inaki Williams at Athletic Bilbao, who has the La Liga record for any player by featuring in 251 consecutive games! At the other end, I guess you would put someone like Marcus Browne, who is 26 and still can't get a club despite his raw talent because his body has never stood up to the rigors of professional football.

And we signed three players over the summer who are closer to Marcus than Inaki on the spectrum. Calculated risk, maybe, but it hasn't come off.

Dembele is a winger that hasn't had the same major injury history in his career, so him I'm happier to chalk up to just bad luck.

I guess the club have evaluated his history, but if fit he’d be useful at this moment

 

[CCYellow]

Whilst this could equally just be the website being rubbish and not up to date (plenty of documented complaints on it), it is interesting that the squad list now says when players are injured.
Brannagan and Bennett are the only players with this tag, so maybe all our wingers are available (it probably is the website not being up to date though).

 

[Mad Dog]

No argument that players get injured more often these days that they used to - for exactly the reasons you outline.

But it's also not correct to say that every winger is the same - like everything, they fit under a distribution from 'Never crocked' to 'Always crocked'

At one end, you've got someone like Inaki Williams at Athletic Bilbao, who has the La Liga record for any player by featuring in 251 consecutive games! At the other end, I guess you would put someone like Marcus Browne, who is 26 and still can't get a club despite his raw talent because his body has never stood up to the rigors of professional football.

And we signed three players over the summer who are closer to Marcus than Inaki on the spectrum. Calculated risk, maybe, but it hasn't come off.

Dembele is a winger that hasn't had the same major injury history in his career, so him I'm happier to chalk up to just bad luck.

OK, you've shown me a winger who isn't injury prone, but my point stands, wingers are particularly prone to injury.

It's always risky stocking up on wingers who have chequered injury records, as you're basically relying on at least two being fit at any one time, but Des has probably had to take a punt on one or two, as we don't have bottomless pits of cash at this level, and needed to bring in real quality throughout the squad.

But I don't think we brought in wingers this summer who were particularly renowned for being injury prone, with the exception of Edwards, who was already here, so I do think it is rotten luck for them all to injured at the same time.

Des strikes me as someone who is humble and intelligent enough to always learn from his mistakes, and I'm sure the longer we stay at this level, the more money we'll have, and Des will bring in more wingers, who are hopefully a little less delicate.

Robinson was unlucky with wingers then.

Some managers are just so clueless, they never learn. Luck plays no part when you're like that.

I wouldn't mind betting Robbo tried to sign Browne when he went to Salford.

 

[Steve Gilbert]

While I agree we've taken some risks and it's currently coming back to bite us (although the three risks and Dembele all being injured at the same time is a bit of bad luck) there are some clear differences between this summer and a KR window. He was here for half a decade so had plenty of time to build a squad how he wanted it without having to scramble around and pick up the projects he seemed to so love. Des had only been here seven months and had much more work to do as we'd also been promoted so needed a better quality of player. KR cleverly avoided this issue by never achieving anything.

We'd also have gone from being one of the better teams with a promotion size budget to relative small fry with a relegation size budget. As much as we'd all have preferred proven quality and reliable players they're harder to find, we were absolutely justified in taking more risks this summer than in the league below when we were a much more attractive proposition.

All that said as we establish ourselves at this level id certainly hope we move towards the reliable types and expect we will. Probably a sense of 'needs must' this summer.

Out of interest who are the players that are injury prone? Edwards, yes. Phillips was a risk due to his age, Placheta, I’m not sure. Bennett, due to his age will pick up knocks and is likely to take slightly longer to recover.
Brannagan though isn’t an injury prone player. He goes into challenges full bloodied and plays on the edge, this can cause injury and usually bad ones. The way he plays I’m surprised he hasn’t got injured more than he has.

 

[Orkney Islands Yellow]

 

[Siho]

Here you go - about 40 seconds in.

Hahahaha. Thanks

 

[Up The Manor]

We've been particularly unlucky to have all our wingers out injured at the same time, but show me a winger in the modern game who isn't injury prone. It's a flaw of modern football fitness training techniques I'm afraid. Super fit = very injury prone.

Players always have and always will pick up injuries, but I do think all modern day footballers are trained to be so super fit, it's actually counterproductive, as they're so highly strung, that they can't handle the rough and tumble and heavy impact of football.

It's like training footballers to be conditioned like 100m or 200m athletes, but with all the added contact, twisting and turning, sudden changes of direction, while putting specific muscles, ligaments and joints under severe stress, pressure and strain that footballers have to deal with, whilst also having to balance on one leg, and swing the other leg to kick a ball, hard, at speed, that makes it inevitable they will regularly get injured these days, a lot more than back in the day. Particularly wingers, as they're delicate little things.

The standards of the modern game's no better for it either, quite the opposite in fact, and the players are picking up injuries in the bloody warmups!

You can't use a violin to play heavy metal music!

I don't think unlucky is the correct term to be using for 3 players that in the last 12 months have played a handful of games between them .
Edwards plays 45 minutes , then not seen for another month .We're lucky we can afford to carry these individuals in the squad .
Hopefully we can be more astute in January with fit ,robust wingers that can play more than 5 games a season in the championship .

 

[werthersoriginal]

I don't think unlucky is the correct term to be using for 3 players that in the last 12 months have played a handful of games between them .
Edwards plays 45 minutes , then not seen for another month .We're lucky we can afford to carry these individuals in the squad .
Hopefully we can be more astute in January with fit ,robust wingers that can play more than 5 games a season in the championship .

As long as those fit robust wingers don’t get injured, of course.

 

[headingtonoldboy]

I don't think you can put Phillps injury down to his age. If I remember correctly, one of the Preston players trampled all over his foot. Age had nothing to do with it. Same with Dembele, got kicked off the ball. Plachetas injury has ,as far as I am aware, never been explained. Only Edwards had a history of injury. So, yes, IMO, we have been unlucky with injured wingers.

 

[Mad Dog]

I don't think unlucky is the correct term to be using for 3 players that in the last 12 months have played a handful of games between them .
Edwards plays 45 minutes , then not seen for another month .We're lucky we can afford to carry these individuals in the squad .
Hopefully we can be more astute in January with fit ,robust wingers that can play more than 5 games a season in the championship .

I agree. We have a number of wingers who we know will not give us a run of games without getting injured again soon, but Des has had to use his summer budget to improve an entire squad for our first season back at this level.

But we can't do it all in one summer, so Des has had to compromise a bit, and probably thought that although our wingers won't be staying fit for a long run of games, there's enough wingers in the squad, that there will always be a couple fit and available.

Unfortunately that hasn't been the case, and they've all ended up injured all at once, which is pretty unlucky, but that's the risk you take with these types of players.

But good quality wingers are quite a pricey luxury, and robust ones are even pricier, so like I said earlier, having already built a strong squad overall, hopefully we'll stay up this season, and will then be in a position to afford some wingers who are more robust for next season.

It's a process, and we're at the start of that process at this level...

 

[Berliner]

I don't think you can put Phillps injury down to his age. If I remember correctly, one of the Preston players trampled all over his foot. Age had nothing to do with it. Same with Dembele, got kicked off the ball. Plachetas injury has ,as far as I am aware, never been explained. Only Edwards had a history of injury. So, yes, IMO, we have been unlucky with injured wingers.

I don't think we'll ever know because the only semi-official thing we've heard from Des is that he had no timeframe on his return, yet there have, apparently been both a) sightings of him in training and in matchday wear and b) rumours that he is out with a long term hamstring injury despite c) it being clearly an impact injury.

It really is extremely curious. Phillips is both close to starting and out till the new year. Schrödingers winger!

 

[Nadi-]

Just watched Ally Mccoist and Alex Ferguson interview, was told always sign players who’d play every week
On his first day on coaching course by Jimmy Sirrell
And always followed that

 

[Joey]

Out of interest who are the players that are injury prone? Edwards, yes. Phillips was a risk due to his age, Placheta, I’m not sure. Bennett, due to his age will pick up knocks and is likely to take slightly longer to recover.
Brannagan though isn’t an injury prone player. He goes into challenges full bloodied and plays on the edge, this can cause injury and usually bad ones. The way he plays I’m surprised he hasn’t got injured more than he has.

I'm talking wingers specifically as that's where we're most short. Phillips isn't just his age, it's his history. He regularly gets injured when autumn comes around so it wasn't unexpected, he was someone I never banked on us getting a full season from. Edwards goes without saying, he's had multiple major hamstring issues and will continue to suffer for the rest of his career unfortunately. Placheta has had a couple of big injuries, including hamstring related. Take them out and Dembele as well and we're very pedestrian.

There will always be players out and impact injuries like Bennett and Brannagan will happen and can't be predicted. Edwards, Phillips and maybe to a lesser extend Placheta were likely to miss chunks of the season. Having them all out at the same time along with Dembele is where we've had a bit of bad fortune.

 

[tonto]

That is one of the reasons Frank Lampard did so well never seemed to get injured although not a particularly skilful player

 

[Steve Gilbert]

I'm talking wingers specifically as that's where we're most short. Phillips isn't just his age, it's his history. He regularly gets injured when autumn comes around so it wasn't unexpected, he was someone I never banked on us getting a full season from. Edwards goes without saying, he's had multiple major hamstring issues and will continue to suffer for the rest of his career unfortunately. Placheta has had a couple of big injuries, including hamstring related. Take them out and Dembele as well and we're very pedestrian.

There will always be players out and impact injuries like Bennett and Brannagan will happen and can't be predicted. Edwards, Phillips and maybe to a lesser extend Placheta were likely to miss chunks of the season. Having them all out at the same time along with Dembele is where we've had a bit of bad fortune.

So which players are injury prone?

 

[tonyw]

So which players are injury prone?

Matt Phillips is 33, missed the second half of the season in 2022/23, and missed four months of the 2023/24 season.
Placheta's 2023/24 season ended with a hamstring injury in March, and his 2022/23 season ended with a shin injury on 20th August!

That qualifies both of them as injury prone in my book (and I assume no-one would disagree with Edwards being described that way).

Again, I understand that the three of them have a level of quality that we probably couldn't have afforded if they were regular 40 game-a-season types. But they were high risk - high reward signings, and what we're seeing now was always the possible downside.