After the week Robinson has had at Oxford, facing Pep’s City will seem like a holiday
I TRY TO PLAY FOOTBALL THE CORRECT WAY SAYS ROBBO – THE ONLY PROBLEM TONIGHT IS HE HELPED TO INVENT IT
THE Sunday papers did not make great reading for Karl Robinson this week.
A 2-1 defeat at the hands of Walsall – his fourth home loss in five league games – left Oxford United in the bottom two in League One.
So the prospect of welcoming Pep Guardiola and Manchester City to the Kassam tonight could be viewed either with dread of a hiding or the chance of a lifetime to take on one of football’s great tacticians.
Robinson is the man who once masterminded a 4-0 League Cup defeat of Manchester United and who has 442 games in management under his belt, some achievement for a 38-year-old.
But after a struggling start to the new season, Robinson admits he has had better times.
He said: “This is as low as I have felt as a manager. This is probably the only time I have had a bad year. We had a relegation at MK Dons but we had the lowest budget in the Championship so that was almost inevitable.
“I don’t see that as a failure; what I see as a failure is where we sit at this moment. But I started in management 10 years ago and still think I have 20 years left. I am only a third of the way through it.”
Some of Robinson’s problems at the moment are created by a bitter stand-off between the club and the stadium owner, Firoz Kassam, a dispute that sees the team locked out their own home until three hours before kick-off while the opposition can take up residence 90 minutes earlier.
Having to train on a pitch which includes a roped-off cricket square does not make preparations any easier but Robinson knows he is in good company. “Look at some of the best managers in the world – Rafa Benitez struggled in Spain early.”
The Liverpudlian, whose playing days were spent in non-League, knows the size of the task facing his side tonight against a team who hammered Cardiff 5-0 on Saturday.
“On any given day City can do any team by three, four or five, as you saw at Cardiff,” he said. “We are probably more open to that level of scoreline.
“We don’t even have an XI v XI pitch to train on, we are training on a cricket pitch. We are not allowed on the cricket square and we play around it until we get our brand new training ground soon.
“Part of the contract we have with the management company at the ground is that we also can’t get in more than three hours before kick-off to set our kit up. We are not overly happy about but we have more pressing issues as we can’t win a game in the league.”
Robinson is no stranger to cup upsets, though, after bossing MK Dons between 2010 and 2016.
It saw the Scouser cut his teeth in management aged 29 before becoming one of the longest-serving bosses in the EFL.
He took the club into the second tier and famously masterminded a stunning 4-0 EFL Cup win over Manchester United in 2014.
Now Robinson, who took charge at League One Charlton from November 2016 to March 2018, faces neighbouring City, who won the Premier League by 19 points last term.
He revealed: “My chairman called me over the weekend to tell me that they have had Pep Guardiola asking for details about the size of the pitch.
“The problem is our grass length is probably the same as Manchester City’s and I think our pitch size is probably the same as well.
“I’ve tried to play football in the correct manner – the problem is I am coming up against someone who helped invent it.”