On The Road
ROBINSON BEMOANS ‘ATROCIOUS’ PERFORMANCE
FoR a club who have a car park where their West Stand should be, oxford United know all about going nowhere.
There won’t be any tailgate parties anytime soon either —at least, not on the evidence of this season’s performances. There’s been precious little to celebrate in these parts recently.
Many had hoped that this might be the year the Us clicked into gear and moved up to the Championship, but with seven games played and only one win to their name, they, like the vehicles that occupy the car park, are gridlocked at the bottom of League one.
The last time the club played in the second tier of English football was in 1999, which coincidentally was the same year they were bought for £1 by Firoz Kassam and promised a glorious future away from the dilapidated Manor Ground.
That knockdown sale came a few years after a tumultuous period under the disgraced newspaper proprietor Robert Maxwell. The nadir of Maxwell’s tenure, as far as the fans were concerned, came in the mid-80s when Maxwell threatened to fold the club unless his proposed merger with rivals Reading went through.
Kassam was understandably seen as a saviour and the eponymous stadium he delivered seemed proof that the club would continue to enjoy a future near the top.
However, 17 years and 15 managers on from moving to the Kassam Stadium (which the club still don’t own), oxford’s place near the top of the league pyramid, just like the state of the stadium’s construction work, is open to question.
There certainly can’t be too many clubs in the country where ball boys have a job description that includes standing in a car park every other weekend, but oxford’s do. Then again, with
some of the wayward shooting on display during yesterday’s 2-1 defeat by Coventry, perhaps that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.
And while there is belief among the supporters that promotion would lead to the completion of the stadium, yesterday’s display on the pitch suggests that fans will be mingling with the cinema-goers that the car park also serves for a little while longer.
A deflected shot from Jordan Shipley gave Coventry the lead 20 minutes into the second half, which was doubled by Conor Chaplin from the penalty spot following oxford goalkeeper Jonathan Mitchell’s foul on Shipley. Jonathan obika pulled one back from a corner with five minutes to go but it came too late and oxford sit a desperate 23rd in the table.
Karl Robinson is the latest in the long line of managers at the Kassam, and, speaking after this dispiriting defeat, he said: ‘The first 20 minutes of the second half we were atrocious. Absolutely atrocious. I’m not happy with certain players. Emotionally we struggled with the game and it’s not acceptable. When teams get in our face we just don’t want to be there.’
Robinson watched the game from the stands as he is serving a ban for comments made after his side’s defeat by Accrington Stanley last month. He commented: ‘It’s colder up there. I’m stood up pulling my hair out.
‘I’ve never told my goalkeeper to kick it out when we are open. The keeper has to be better all round. It’s too raw now to comment on whether I should make a change there. I need to watch the game back first before making a decision.’
Mark Robins’s Coventry move into the top half of the table in their first season back in League one and the 48- year- old is already doing better than his doomed tenure at the helm in the 2012-13 season.
Speaking afterwards, Robins said: ‘We were the better side, we needed a kickstart to get us up and running. We controlled things and really grew into the game. (The win) was deserved.’
As for oxford, with the manager labelling them atrocious and clearly not trusting his goalkeeper, it appears that the team, just like their fourth stand, do not have much of a foundation to build on.
OXFORD STUCK IN GRIDLOCK AT THE BOTTOM