Oxford United season review: An enjoyable journey to a familiar destination

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It felt fitting that Oxford United ended their season with a result both obvious and unexpected in practically equal measure.

Summing up a campaign that for the most part left those watching speechless in a few thousand words came as a challenge as much as it was a pleasure. Where precisely to start making sense of a side that many would agree often defied logic or reason is hard to be certain, so perhaps their most recent performance is an apt point to begin.

The second leg of the Yellows League One play-off semi-final against Blackpool nicely encapsulated their 2020/21 season as a whole, with its stomach-churning combination of hope, frustration, disappointment and pride, as a 3-3 draw saw Karl Robinson’s side fall to a 6-3 defeat on aggregate and ultimately end up some way short of reaching a second Wembley final in 10 months.

It was a campaign with a nightmarish start that somehow made behind-closed-doors football even worse, followed by a rise from the ashes that would have had left any mythological beast in it’s dust before inconsistency brought them back down to earth and then one final, season-defining push, fuelled by a commitment to attacking and the emotional energy of their head coach, set up the meeting with Blackpool.

A difficult start

The evening of the second leg began with the near absence of hope. No team has ever overcome a three goal first leg deficit in EFL play-off history, and having been brushed aside by Neil Critchley’s Tangerines at the Kassam Stadium three days previous, even a return to the free-scoring form that snatched a top six place seemed unlikely to secure a second consecutive final appearance.

Yet Oxford had overcome even greater odds to find themselves involved in the end of season festivities.

At the beginning of November they were bottom of League One, struggling to come to terms with a season of third tier football without supporters after being denied promotion to the Championship by Wycombe last July.

The departure of Rob Dickie to QPR created an imperious, ball-playing hole to fill in the centre of defence. A peculiar eye infection suffered by midfielder Cameron Brannagan left the team without energy and ideas in possession. It took time for Robinson to find the best way to use the raft of new signings in attack and for them to adjust to one another.

Oxford started with just four wins in their opening 17 league games, a run that included a first A420 derby defeat to Swindon in nine meetings, and although concerns regarding relegation seemed exaggerated given the talent within the playing squad, any hope of avenging the previous season’s heartbreak was seemingly misguided.

The derby defeat was not only painful because it was the first since 2001 but also because it characterised many of the early season issues. Matty Taylor opened the scoring in the first half before Oxford missed a number of chances to secure the win and eventually fell to defeat thanks to two late Swindon goals that both involved ropey defending.

Robinson’s project was beginning to look like it was stalling, if not falling apart entirely, as the upturn in form that secured a top six place on points per game once Covid-19 curtailed the previous League One season started to look less like validation for his ambitious, possession-heavy approach and more a good spell of results combined with perversely fortunate timing.

Despite the relative calm around the club, the head coach did make the drastic decision to drop experienced goalkeeper Simon Eastwood after a mistake for Swindon’s winning goal. Academy graduate Jack Stevens became the club’s first-choice ‘keeper even though he had previously made just two league appearances for the senior side at the age of 23.

Robinson described it as one of the toughest decisions of his career to drop the goalkeeper that had served him admirably for the entirety of his two and a half year spell at the club up to that point. Turning around a sense of stagnation at the Kassam that was deepening by the week was beginning to look like it could be one of the toughest challenges he could face as well.

Festive cheer

Top-scorer Taylor notched his 19th goal of the season in the opening seven minutes at Bloomfield Road last Friday when he stabbed in from a poorly-defended free-kick. Such an early strike was never going to be written off as a consolation regardless of the scale of the task ahead, even more so considering the resilience Oxford had shown in climbing the table throughout the festive period.

A club-record winning run over the Winter extinguished fears of the drop and showcased just how much better the Yellows were than most of the teams in the bottom half of League One once they had found consistency in terms of both team selection and performances. Fans even briefly returned to the Kassam before Covid restrictions tightened once again, taking in a 4-0 win against Northampton.

Despite the obvious pressure he faced, Stevens quickly became a calming presence in goal as he kept six clean sheets in his first 10 appearances, Rob Atkinson steadily began to fill Dickie’s shoes, combining with Elliott Moore to create one of the third tier’s best centre-back partnerships, and Sam Long and Josh Ruffels went on a run of providing a goal or assist from full-back practically every week.

However, it was further forward that the most noticeable improvements took place.

Olamide Shodipo, an Ireland youth international on loan from QPR, was at times criticised for his inconsistency in what was ultimately an up-and-down season for the club, yet in mid-winter his effectiveness could not be questioned.

A run of six goals in eight games – including an injury-time, 30-yard lob to secure the three points in a manic 4-3 win at Rochdale – nicely dovetailed with a tally of six in five for striker Taylor, contributing to a sequence of nine wins in a row across all competitions and leaving the Yellows in sixth place at the end of January.

All of the league victories came against sides that would finish the season in the bottom half of the League One table, something that would be highlighted when the fixture schedule became less forgiving as winter gave way to spring, but a promising deadline day in the January transfer window secured Oxford’s status as genuine top six contenders.

Attacking midfielder Elliot Lee arrived on loan from Luton having been an influential part of their rise through the Football League over the previous three seasons, and winger Brandon Barker, once of Manchester City’s academy, arrived on a temporary deal from Rangers.

Both scored in a 2-0 win at Bristol Rovers in what were their second appearances for the club, and although both would face spells out with injury before the end of the season, they provided greater variety for Robinson to utilise in attack whilst also producing numerous moments of quality that made Oxford even more watchable than they had previously been.

Long had drawn Oxford level just before half-time at the Keepmoat Stadium, only for quick-fire goals from Fejiri Okenabirhie and Taylor Richards to take the game away from the visitors early in the second period.

It was the fifth time in the season they had conceded twice in the space of 10 minutes, and the trend would continue to handicap them for the remainder of the campaign.

Consistent moments of inconsistency

Having conceded twice midway through the first half of the first leg against Blackpool to surrender any semblance of control they had in the tie, Oxford repeated the trick in the return fixture when they allowed Elliot Embleton to cut in from the left and finish before Kenny Dougall acrobatically scored from a corner to leave Robinson’s side in an even worse position than they had begun the evening.

This inability to keep the wolf from the door – there ended up being ten occasions where they conceded twice in a 10 minute period – was less problematic against the weaker teams in League One as Oxford’s increasingly potent attack allowed them to hit-back, but against those that were capable of stifling them, spells of defensive uncertainty were ruthlessly exploited.

They won just three games between the middle of February and the start of April, missing out on a trip to Wembley in the process after defeat to League Two Tranmere in the semi-final of the Papa John’s Trophy.

Whilst the Papa John’s was used as an opportunity for Robinson to keep his bountiful squad fit and healthy, the loss of form in the league indicated aspirations of a Wembley return for an all the more valuable prize were somewhat fanciful given the poor start to the season.

Defeats against Hull and Portsmouth made sense given both had their sights set on automatic promotion at the time, and Blackpool’s comfortable win at the Kassam in March turned out to be prophetic, but revenge against Swindon at the County Ground and wins against Doncaster and Lincoln were indicators of how good Oxford could be when everything went to plan.

The defeats began to look like costly ones and the wins all the less glamorous due to an inability to beat teams around them in the table though. A 0-0 draw against a Peterborough side that would go on to finish second was followed by another goalless draw vs Charlton – a game in which a last-minute penalty save from Stevens turned out to be even more crucial than it appeared at the time.

Oxford ended up collecting just 19 of their 74 points against sides that finished in the top half of the League One table, and just six against teams that ended the season above them.

Although it is easy to overplay the significance of these results – most teams pick up the majority of their wins against weaker opponents – the lack of points, or even promising performances, against the stronger sides could be swept under the carpet by reaching the play-offs but only if you ignored the reality of the following season had promotion been achieved.

Oxford kept plugging away, just as they did on the North-West coast when Atkinson nodded home an Anthony Forde free-kick early in the second half to level the scores on the night.

Regardless of whether results were positive or negative, Robinson was always quick to remind anyone who would listen that the play-off race was an open one, and even though results were hard to come by against better opposition, he rarely felt his side had been outplayed.

The homegrown hero

Jerry Yates’ goal just moments after Atkinson had equalised not only effectively killed off any feint hopes of progression but also highlighted another of the themes of Oxford’s season; the importance of Sam Long.

The locally born right-back was voted both Players’ Player of the Season and Supporters’ Player of the Season but missed the two games against Blackpool due to a hamstring injury, and his absence was never more conspicuous than when Yates drifted into a wide open space in behind Long’s stand-in, Forde, before cutting inside and thumping a shot beyond Stevens.

Long had established himself as a steady yet unspectacular defensive option since making his debut in 2013 when Chris Wilder was still U’s manager, but his lack of attacking prowess made him a seemingly uncomfortable fit for a head coach like Robinson who places great emphasis on his full-backs bombing forward regularly.

His progression throughout the season is undeniable. He ended up with six goals and four assists, and was even labelled a ‘manager’s dream’ by Robinson upon signing a new three-year contract in April.

A spectacular goal against Plymouth in the U’s final game of 2020 summed up his performances this season. Long started the move in his own half, showing elegant footwork to escape two tackles before playing the ball wide to Sean Clare. Not content with starting the move, the 26-year-old galloped into the Argyle penalty area, leaving his marker in his wake, before slotting Clare’s cross home.

He was committed, positive and keen to showcase a new found eye for goal both in that moment and in the season as a whole.

His ascent from a player many supporters, and possibly even his own head coach, saw as one to upgrade on to someone it would now feel a struggle to replace is testament to both his own determination to improve and Robinson’s ability to coax more out of him than anyone previously thought possible.

It was therefore all the more disappointing when he limped off with a hamstring injury midway through the second half of the final day win against Burton, leaving Oxford without their most influential player over the regular season for their two most important games of the campaign.

Taking the handbrake off

Oxford did not cave in though, as they did not when the play-offs were seemingly out of reach after a defeat to Accrington Stanley on Easter Monday had followed an ill-tempered loss at Sunderland on Good Friday that saw Robinson sent to the stands after the police had been called regarding allegations that goalkeeper Stevens had been head-butted by a member of the hosts’ coaching staff.

It is at this point that the Blackpool game loses it’s usefulness as an analogy, as although Shodipo’s equaliser on the night continued the theme of chaos that characterised both the evening as a whole and most of Oxford’s season, it hardly kept the contest alive to the extent that the U’s late run of form did in the closing weeks of regular play.

They went into the final seven fixtures of the campaign with few retaining any genuine belief that the top six would be reached, despite Robinson’s regular post-match declarations that his side were right in the race.

The defeat to Accrington left them 12th in the league table, six points shy of the play-off places having played more games than a number of the other contenders, meaning a 6-0 win at Crewe the following weekend was interpreted as a bizarre scoreline produced by two sides with little to play for rather than a statement of yellow intent.

It was at this point of the season that Oxford began to field as many attacking players as possible in their head coach’s favoured 4-3-3 formation. Shodipo and Barker were given even greater license to focus on hurting opponents’ defences, and Brannagan dropped into the deepest midfield role with forward-thinking players like Mark Sykes and James Henry fielded ahead of him.

In Robinson’s own words, he had ‘taken the handbrake off’ in an attempt to collect as many points as possible before the season’s end.

A comfortable midweek win against Shrewsbury combined with results elsewhere going their way made Robinson’s optimism begin to look prescient, and a home fixture against a Gillingham outfit that also had an optimistic eye on a place on a play-off spot was the perfect opportunity for an evaluation of how realistic their ambitions were.

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In what was one of Oxford’s most underwhelming performances of the season, they found themselves 2-0 down with only 15 minutes left. However, a Sam Winnall goal followed by two late strikes from Long completed a belief-defying comeback to consolidate optimism that this erratic side were destined to keep their season alive until the bitter end – quite what the final outcome would be was less certain.

A defeat to relegation-threatened AFC Wimbledon three days later again stressed just how frustrating Oxford could be, as a James Henry red card for handling the ball on his own goal-line saw a 1-0 lead quickly turn into a 2-1 defeat. But a straightforward victory over Plymouth and another win that saw them come from behind, this time at Shrewsbury, meant a top six spot was still attainable on the final day.

The meeting with Burton was arguably the most surprising afternoon of Oxford’s season as they comfortably won 4-0 and stole the final pay-off place from Portsmouth after they lost to Accrington. They also finished above Charlton on goal difference alone, meaning Stevens’ penalty save from Danish striker Ronnie Schwartz had, in theory, been the most important moment of the season.

The convincing win meant Oxford had won six of their final seven games, scoring 24 goals in the process and once again marking themselves out as a side worth watching in a season of stodgy, spectator-less football.

A different type of disappointment

Reaching the play-offs was an achievement in itself. Last season’s top six finish was secured on points-per-game with only 35 fixtures completed – an unexpected bonus amid an uncertain climate.

This time it was earned by overcoming a terrible start and a late-season wobble, by playing some of the most entertaining football in League One and by sticking with a talented, young head coach even when he allowed his emotions to get the better of him.By no means should that excuse or explain the underwhelming first leg performance against Blackpool.

Oxford displayed all of their least desirable qualities at the least desirable moment against a formidable opponent, but the disappointment of failing to reach the Championship feels grounded within something that is growing and developing – a world away from the play-off campaign last summer that was disconnected in terms of its timing and the absence of supporters.

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There may well be departures this summer; left-back Ruffels is yet to extend a contract that expires at the end of June, Brannagan has a release clause in his deal that has Championship clubs circling, and Atkinson has unsurprisingly gained admirers from above thanks to his combination of defensive resilience and composure in possession.

Having to replace talented players is an unfortunate reality for almost every club at Oxford’s level, yet not every one of them can claim to have a team that so regularly leaves you feeling energised and excited, often regardless of whether it is leading to good results.

They are a young side that probably lack the necessary experience to turn their patches of brilliance into promotion-winning consistency, and although Robinson’s stated ambition of turning Oxford into one of the ‘top 30 clubs in the country’ may seem ambitious given they still seem some way short of second tier quality, his level of investment in the team’s fortunes cannot be questioned.

In a season where supporters have had less contact with their club than any other, Oxford have produced football you can feel a connection with, and although the season again ended in disappointment in terms of its outcome, they have both a group of players and a head coach capable of providing the sort of emotional welcome home that practically all football fans are hoping for.

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