FAN’S VIEW 22/23 – No.34 – BARNSLEY AT HOME

Our Opponents

Other than Barnsley, we’d played every other L1 club at least once this season but a postponement earlier in the season meant this was our first meeting.

The Tykes spend most of the time in the Championship, every now and again slipping into L1 but usually going straight back up. It might be different this time though. Automatic promotion already looks a step too far. They’re sixth with games in hand on every team bar Accrington but are 18 points adrift of leaders Plymouth. Via the play-offs it will have to be. They’ve won two and lost two of their last four games, scoring five and conceding seven. No clean sheets were kept and they failed to score in two of those games. So bang average form then. That though trumps the drivel we produced in our last two matches.

Pacific Media Group (PMG), an advertising solutions firm, acquired Barnsley in December 2017. They have a “Moneyball” approach to the game, digging deep into data sets previously untapped to identify undervalued players. This sometimes works, sometimes not. Brexit certainly hasn’t helped the cause of English clubs in this regard with them no longer having free access to the European Labour market.

Under PMG’s watch Barnsley made the Championship play-off semi-finals with a very young squad two seasons ago which has to be deemed a successful campaign. However last season they won only six games and finished bottom. More a load of balls served up for their fans than taking the next step and grabbing a slice of the vast Premier League money pie. This means they’re now visiting the three sided Kassam Stadium rather than the 62,850 state of the art Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Bet there’s hot water there and no bird shit.

After that play-off semi-final defeat to Swansea head coach Valérian Ismäel and captain Alex Mowatt left, with CEO Dane Murphy also departing for Nottingham Forest leaving fans with no public figure communicating with them. Fans hate being left in the dark. Things can unravel in no time at all and did. New head coach Markus Schopp wasn’t given much time or say on recruitment so there’s lots of ingredients for a disastrous season there. We know what crap recruiting leads to.

PMG own other football clubs. FC Thun (Switzerland), KV Oostende (Belgium), FC Den Bosch (Holland), FC Kaiserlautern (Germany), AS Nancy Lorraine (France), and Esbjerg fB (Denmark). As Barnsley were going down so were the last two mentioned here as well. Getting three of your seven football clubs relegated is beyond careless. Time to have a serious look at the business model perhaps?

They’ll soon be publishing their next set of accounts but the latest that are in the public domain cover the Covid season to y/e 31/05/21 prior to their relegation year. Given the date they were signed off they do cover under ‘principal risks and uncertainties’ “the impact of relegation upon revenue streams.” They also include “impairment of player registration values and onerous player contracts resulting from loss of form or long-term injury.” If only our accounts were so detailed and informative.

They made a loss of £4.2m. Wages were up 22% to £14.3m but that was largely due to bonuses having to be paid because they had success. They claimed £2.8m in furlough costs and applied for an EFL loan of £3.6m to pay taxes. The balance sheet shows £1.4m in the black.

After relegation there was a board shake-up with former co-chairmen Chien Lee and Paul Conway (owner of PMG) voted off the Barnsley board.

Ownership is now something like this – Lee (31 per cent), Indian businessman Neerav Parekh (21 per cent), Julie Anne Quay and four other investors (20 per cent), the Cryne family (20 per cent) and PMG (eight per cent). How does that work and who is pulling the strings?

Is anyone pulling any football strings at Oxford Utd? Do we have a footballing business model? How interested are our owners in this side of things or is it just a case of fingers crossed we don’t get relegated and if we do don’t care too much, let’s just focus 100% on the Triangle?

But enough of this stuff on Barnsley, most of which was written before we played them.

OXFORD UNITED 1 BARNSLEY 2

Oh dear. Oh dear. Oh dear. Another evening best forgotten. Another dreadful waste of money for those fans who are paying to watch this shadow of a football team. A team that could well be sleep-walking towards relegation.

Going back over the past five completed campaigns, ignoring the Covid interrupted season, the points achieved by the team in the last relegation slot were 40; 47; 50; 50 and 49. So 51 seems safe(ish) although of course there is no guarantee. That’s another five wins and a draw. We’ve got 17 games left and looking at us now it is hard to see where the next three points are going to come from let alone five lots of them. Every team below us bar bottom placed Forest Green have games in hand. Lincoln have three and Accrington four.

Talk about – or sing about as the visiting Barnsley fans did – “football in a library” was very much it. Barely a flag in sight. Compare and contrast with the home fans in the Pirelli Stadium on Saturday. An eerie quietness at times. Pre-season friendly written all over it. It came over as a meaningless game most of the time. Very much not the case though. We should be fighting for our L1 lives now before it gets utterly desperate. The attendance was recorded as 7,381 but take away the stay away season ticket holders and it would be way lower than that.

Since the last FV Matty Taylor has gone out the door on loan to Port Vale. Will we ever know the answer to the question – is he not scoring because he is not the force of old or is it because he’s just not getting any service? A combination of both I suspect but if he does start scoring regularly for Vale that will be a damning indictment on the way things are being done at OUFC.

We’ve got another newcomer, Tyler Smith. I’ve heard him described as a striker and a centre-forward. KR said “He’s a good player. He works hard, he is quick and he is a good finisher”.  Not that I believe everything on the internet but I’ve seen it said that he’s five foot nine. Some EFL on-line news item says he’s never going to be a prolific Championship level scorer. Please may he find L1 an easier proposition.

The starting line-up, as is usually the case now, had us thinking what’s going on here? No Brandon Fleming, a supposed specialist left-wing back, but on the right at the back, in a bloody back four, Djavan Anderson. What a crock of crap. And the man starting off down the middle up front, Billy Bodin. It’s a joke, it really is. Talk about lack of balance. Square pegs in round holes. We have somehow managed to build a squad from which a proper functioning football team cannot be created. Good players or not that’s not the point. Robinson out, we hear the cries and if we’re not yelling it we’re mostly thinking it but if anyone else were to come in now they’ve got so little to work with. It’s like putting a jigsaw puzzle together with half the pieces missing plus the box lid so you don’t even know what you’re supposed to be building.

There was a caller to Radio Oxford afterwards though who could see what Robinson is doing. He’s building for next season. I don’t mean to be rude but someone should check to see if medication is being sneakily poured down the sink.

Until about the 70^th minute I thought we were as bad as it has been for a very long time. Coming on the back of Wycombe and then Burton this was taking the piss, then bringing it back and taking it some more. I’ve heard more than one person, including Simon Eastwood, say that this was better than the previous two performances. That’s not how I saw it at all.

There’s a vicious downward spiral when form and belief is lost. The team as an entity plays badly, that affects players individually and they get worse, good players start to play like poor players. That in turn makes the team even worse and so it goes.

Even players I have been very impressed with are affected by this. During the match I commented that Ciaron Brown was not having a good game. My son replied, “None of them are having good games”. Later I said the same about Kyle Joseph. My son said the same thing again.

He had a point although I would perhaps argue the case in court for a few.

Lewis Bate tries his best to play some football but when those around you are not up to it for whatever reason that’s an almost impossible task. There were times though when he sank to the level of the rest.

I don’t think any player was giving less than 100%, it’s just that they look bewildered. Sam Long seems to be giving that little bit more. The mythical 110% maybe. Perhaps as a local lad, a long serving one at that, the hurt of what’s happening at the moment is more painful for him than others. That back pass he hammered at Simon Eastwood though sums up what a mess we are in. These things now are not one offs.

I’m possibly clutching at non-existent straws here aren’t I?

It almost goes without saying that Barnsley were the better team. That doesn’t mean that we didn’t have chances. Even teams as off form as we are will create little bits and pieces and go close now and again. Also there will be incidents that the people wearing overly yellow tinted glasses will hang on to and big up to such an extent that they convince themselves we were unlucky not to get something from the match.

Again we had more possession than our opponents – 53% – and had more shots than them but the stats tell how dreadful we are at having efforts on goal that have much likelihood of finding their way into the back of the net. We had 16 shots but only two were on target. Nine were from outside the box and six were blocked. Barnsley only had nine shots but five of those were on target.

Early on Cameron Brannagan played a good high ball over the top which Bodin ran onto really well beating the offside trap (or possibly not). He had only keeper Bradley Collins to face. We should have scored. But no. He shot just wide from outside the box. I would have thought he could have taken it on further with Collins retreating. Also to his right was Joseph although he may well have got himself ahead of the ball and therefore offside but it shows what a mess we are. No confidence, no understanding.

Another example was when Yanic Wildschut had got in down the left. Joseph was in the box unmarked but this time definitely onside. A pass to him and a very good chance would have been created and for us they’re rare so best make the most of it. I don’t know if I can call it a pass but Wildschut just hammered the ball at Joseph. Inexplicable and unforgiveable. If players want to win fans over they’ve got to do a lot better than produce moronic football.

We remained level for half an hour which was a bit of an achievement but no surprise when we conceded. WE DON’T KEEP CLEAN SHEETS.

Long had headed away a ball into the area but they were quicker than us to pick it up and it had not gone far. The Barnsley men played it around a bit near the corner flag and although we had players there, we failed to prevent the cross coming in. Bate and Brown seemed to be marking the same player with Adam Phillips left free to whip in a delightful centre. There were lots of bodies in the area where the ball had been played. We had a slight advantage numbers wise but it ended up as a goal nonetheless. There were so many heads there it was difficult to see who got the touch. Bobby Thomas claimed it. If it was him then a good finish but with Elliott Moore in our ranks isn’t defending head height balls supposed to be one of our few strengths?

So 1-0 down at the break and deservedly so but it was worse than that with Brannagan having to be replaced. As well as playing better football than us, Barnsley also appeared to be stronger and more physical. Some of the challenges they were winning were hard but fair, others for me fell into the category that borders on thuggery. Hammering into a player intending to make harsh contact is wrong but referee Lee Swabey allowed it to continue. Didn’t do us and Cameron Brannagan any favours. As he could hardly walk why on earth did he go back on after his first bout of treatment? A very poor and ill-judged decision but that’s par for the course at our football club at the moment.

It doesn’t look good and I wonder how long our highest paid player will be out. Get back soon Cam but that said he’s been nowhere near his best.

At half time my thinking was this is bad. My son, who is usually very level headed and tolerant, said I know you said we were rubbish at Wycombe and Burton but I hadn’t realised that it really is this bad. He’s quite a good barometer. Even he began to shout out a bit in anguish and that never happens.

The second half carried on with more of the same. Just before the hour was up we were a further goal down.

We had a throw in our half. We lost the ball. Well Bate did twice (um!). We’d tried to play in a tight situation and they’d marked us properly so possession was relinquished. In the blink of an eye they’d played through our lines – that’s if we’d had lines. Devante Cole was away down the wing with green grass in front of him. Both Moore and Long went to Cole, Anderson slid to the floor and the ball was passed PROPERLY to Herbie Kane. He passed PROPERLY to another unmarked white shirt and Nicky Cadden blasted home. Very bad defending all round although I wouldn’t put blame at Easty’s door.

He was the better of the two keepers. I’d probably go as far as suggesting that Collins could be the worst one I’ve seen since we’ve been back in League One. He was that bad yet we didn’t really test him we are so feeble up top.

A few minutes later Robinson made a tactical change, Tyler Goodrham and Smith replacing Anderson and Ateef Konate. I’d no idea what formation we were playing or quite who was supposed to be where but it certainly didn’t weaken us. Konate had been okay but nothing special.

Although as a collective Barnsley’s back line were of a better standard than the man behind them, I didn’t think they were all that. A long punt from Eastwood undid them and Smith was through. Given Collins’s positioning a simple lob would have halved the deficit. Smith had his head in his hands immediately he made contact. The ball tamely landing in Collins’s arms. I felt sorry for the lad but FFS. It just fitted with everything that’s happening at the moment. It’s not bad luck it’s bad finishing.

Then for the first time in the game, other than when I had cramp, I jumped up from my seat in excitement. That was thanks to Goodrham. Still in his teens on a pittance. Come on you experienced guys taking home a good wedge, take note.

The young lad nipped in and intercepted a pass just outside our box, went forward with purpose, beat an opponent and made a considerable distance before laying a good pass to Joseph who had gone with him. The best run of the game from an Oxford player and perhaps a little partnership in the earliest of stages? Joseph came inside but Thomas had got back to block.

For the first time in the game the home crowd were enlivened. There was hope. Hope we could score. We did from the resulting out swinging corner. Moore connected. Being un-marked helped and proved, as I had suspected, Barnsley’s defence was get-at-able.

Now there was belief, we had momentum. From another corner a Brown back to goal over-head effort hit the bar and went over. A bit unlucky? Perhaps.

There was also a header that Smith glanced wide. I thought he should have done better with it but a tiny bit of promise.

This momentum however was soon snuffed out by the visitors’ tactics of constantly going down to ensure there was no flow to the play whatsoever. Our fans knew that the referee, save for waving the odd yellow card which Barnsley were happy to take, wasn’t going to stop it.

Over the 90 minutes we got exactly what we deserved. Nowt.

It’s depressing yes. However bad runs end sometime don’t they? I can’t see much evidence to suggest that will be the case against Shrewsbury on Saturday. They’ve won their last four league games scoring 12 and conceding just two. The bookies make us favourites! You can still get 11/4 on a Shrews win – at one time 29/10 was available. Bet Victor are only offering evens on an Oxford win. I thought these guys had it just about right other than the odd blip.