The second half is a little tougher to write about because within minutes of it starting, I was bladder completely empty, which is a nice metaphor for the glass half empty title. From minute 46 to the final blast of the referee’s whistle, we were second-best. Now, that’s not because we were bad – if we were, we’d have conceded more clear-cut chances, but it’s a credit to Oxford United. I’m baffled, utterly baffled, at how that collection of players is struggling below us. Karl Robinson must have lost the dressing room or something because, on that showing, Oxford will finish above us this season.
I’m not slathering over the opposition to mask our own shortcomings in the second half, but Cameron Brannagan is as good a player at this level as you’ll see. Bate and Henry looked controlled on the ball, and perhaps the only thing they lacked was a cutting-edge up top. We certainly got no change out of them at all, and without being harsh, it was one-way traffic for almost all of the second half.
At first, it was because we were overrun in midfield. I thought Ted and Ethan got swamped, and it meant blue shirts were almost always on the ball. We shifted it around and went four at the back, but that didn’t have a huge effect, as they still bossed the game. It was only in the latter stages of the game we seemed to shut up shop and went to what looked a lot like a 4-5-1, looking to preserve the point. What I’m trying to say is we didn’t park the bus and give up hope, 4-4-2 is not an overtly defensive formation, but we were just second best. I think outside of Ipswich and Sheff Weds, that’s the only time this season at the Bank I’ve felt we’ve been outwitted by our opponents.
I mentioned the first half xG, so it’s only fair to mention the second period – they had 1.71, us 0.05. We had two shots, one on target; they had 13, just four on target. If they had a decent striker, I think we might have lost the game. Sometimes, clubs lose games, and this was one we perhaps, on reflection, deserved to lose.
We didn’t, though, did we? Instead, we threw our bodies on the line and battled. Sometimes the defending was what Steve Thompson used to call ‘agricultural’, which I think means very basic. If the ball went near we kicked it away, not really worrying where it went. Credit to MK; he did try to change things by bringing Diamond on, but it didn’t work. As the game wore on, Mandroiu drifted out, and Ben House wasn’t even as eye-catching as he has been as an attacking force. We were hanging on without ever really hanging on. It wasn’t backs-to-the-wall one-way traffic, chance after chance, but there was only one team in it.
Now, if you’re glass half empty, that’s ominous. If you’re glass half full, we finally did what we needed to get over the line. The truth is that there was virtually no difference between this game, Milton Keynes or Forest Green. We edged the first half and were poorer in the second, but in this instance, we hung on for the win.
We only did so after some wasteful shooting from them and some good saves from Carl Rushworth. They wasted three great chances from corners and set pieces before Yann Wildschut forced Rushworth into a decent save on 82 minutes, low to his right. If that looked like being important, it was nothing compared to what happened four minutes later. Gatlin O’Donkor, another youth team product, was teed up with a cross from Djavan Anderson (who, incidentally, played nine times for Lazio in Serie A two seasons ago and has played for Bari and Dutch top-flight team PEC Zwolle). The header, from point-blank range, should have brought a goal, but somehow Rushworth pushed it up into the air and then managed to regain his composure to catch the ball. It was a save worth every bit as much as Mandroiu’s goal.
That did seem to knock the wind out of their sails, and despite five additional minutes in total, they didn’t muster a final push towards our goal. We’d weathered the storm and sealed our first win in (checks notes), oh, just three weeks. Listening to some of the comments afterwards, you might have been forgiven for thinking it had been longer with things like ‘at last a win’, but no, we last won against Bristol Rovers on February 11th, three weeks ago. On the other hand, we haven’t lost a home league game in 330 days, and avoiding defeat against Peterborough and Cheltenham would make it a full year. Considering in the previous year (April 9th 2021 – April 8th 2022), we lost 11 home league matches, I’d say that’s good going.
Aside from Carl Rushworth, who will get Man of the Match from many, I thought Roughan, Poole, Montsma, and O’Connor were solid, Erhahon consistent and Lasse excellent at full-back. It’s hard to lavish praise on the front players after half-time, but in the first half Ben House scrapped hard, and I felt Shodipo and Mandroiu showed nice touches. Tough Ted looks a different prospect as well – he’s turning into a fully-fledged central midfielder with some meaty tackles, and whilst at times last season he felt flaky, he’s certainly committed and looking really fit right now, so credit the sports science team for that.
Overall, I’m sure you saw the same as me – a decent opening 45, a below-par second period and sometimes a few nervous moments. Unlike the last couple of weeks, we hung on for the win, lifting us to 11th. That’s our ceiling for this season, I think, looking at the points (and budgets) above us, but if you’d offered me that in August, I’d have made you sign it in blood to make sure you meant it. Hell, if you’d offered me it after Cambridge a couple of weeks ago, I’d have taken it.
None of us knows what the future holds. It’s easy to say the second half raises questions left to be answered; of course it does. Every step we take raises questions as to how we’re going to progress, and whilst the doomsayers have been prophecising relegation battle for 18 months now, we’ve only really flirted with the possibility once, and that was a good 12 months ago. In fact, since Mark Kennedy has come in, overall, we’ve looked exactly what we are; a middling League One team, a work in progress, and I can live with that because it means we should be safe when we go on my stag do to Morecambe away, where I suspect there will be a lot of glasses half empty, and then empty, before being refilled.