Oxford United 1 Watford 0 (15/03/2025)

Yesterday at 11:52 AM

1- That I’m a professional statistician doesn’t directly imply that I’m a geek.

The job requires mathematical aptitude, an analytical mind, the ability to frame a question in a numerical way. Attention to detail, probably… but not an obsession with detail. Not compiling lists of things. Part of my expertise is in helping people ask questions with data and ultimately, perhaps, helping them prove things. As a logical extension, helping them design their experiments and trials to facilitate this proof. Then there’s… making decisions based on data. “Based on what we know, can we justify this expensive improvement to our recipe?”, for instance. Or looking for patterns, relationships… techniques that get refined and developed and improved and (especially) relabelled (for “Trequartista” or “False nine” read “Machine Learning” or even “A.I.”).

Being good at some of this makes me a smart-arse. It doesn’t make me a geek.

I am, however, a geek.

Only a geek would maintain a spreadsheet of every game he’d been to (1417 and counting) detailing results, line-ups, goalscorers and so on (incidentally just as not all statisticians are geeks, not all geeks are statisticians. Hello, Dave). All of which informs me that before today I’d see us play Oxford on twelve occasions drawing twice and losing only once (albeit a significant one, the last game in front of the Vicarage Road terrace). In that time Oxford had been hammered on several occasions, on one notorious afternoon turned up without a change kit and scored a grand total of three goals (including Chris Allen’s winner in 1991, and another by David Bardsley which on a moral level probably doesn’t count).

Today was going to be fine.

2- And it starts off fine. A pleasant cross-country drive from North Bedfordshire in the sunshine; I don’t even have to do the driving. Daughter 2 has ducked out again, “poorly”, but I’m trying to be stoic about it and if Oxford’s ground is one of those horrible out-of-town aberrations surrounded by nothing more engaging or distracting than a car park, at least the walk there takes us through a string of actual parks.

The last time I was here, Danny Webber and Bruce Dyer scored in a pre-season friendly. Twenty-odd years on, a three-sided stadium remains absurd but nonetheless it has been twenty-odd years and it’s not unreasonable to allow for the fact that the ground has been here for this long even if we’ve scarcely been here in the interim. Songs along the line of the profoundly witty “Three stands, you’ve only got three stands” are surely not merely old hat but no longer a hat at all. At least the slightly surreal “car park, car park give us a song” was genuinely funny, even if it too must have been heard a thousand times before.

Firoz Kassam himself sold the club in 2006, but retains the ground leaving the club as pauper tenants and unable to raise any cash from it. All opponents are complete bastards of course, let alone those about to beat us, but it’s difficult not to sympathise with the stated intent to relocate. One hopes that the new place has slightly more character about it (not to mention the conventional number of sides); the availability of popcorn buckets from the kiosks only adds to the suggestion that we’ve stumbled onto a cinema complex rather than a football ground.

3- I don’t remember the last time that a matchday squad featured a name that I didn’t recognise at all. Yves Ma-Kalambay’s appearance on the bench at Brighton for the Chris Eagles game in 2006, probably. Jai-Dea Moulton is the latest kid to be afforded bench-warming duty; there’s clearly a degree of “reward for progress” and wanting to expose the more promising youngsters to the matchday experience as well as necessity, since an 18 year-old defensive midfielder wouldn’t otherwise be getting the nod ahead of another forward with Ramírez-Espain already on the bench and all three starting attacking players comfortable in midfield positions. This despite Vakoun Bayo retaining his place on the bench with Kayembe continuing his wrecking-ball improvisation in this unaccustomed role… Mike’s pre-match assertion was that Bayo was the poster boy for the parlous state of the squad and it’s hard to disagree. Tom owned the decision not to prioritise another forward in January, and the sunlight twinkling off Doumbia’s rough edges, edges that need honing by senior experience, back up that call.

But Tom isn’t the reason that resources are tight enough to require that prioritisation and we’re obviously struggling here. Our light injury load thus far this season reflects well on the conditioning and training of the squad, but everyone is surely grateful for the rare gift of an international break.

We’re fortunate that Oxford are terrible. George Elek, semi-celebrity U’s fan, will tweet (or whatever) at half-time that the game is there for the taking. Hugely irritating that he was proven right by the passage of events because there’s little in the home side’s first half showing to justify any optimism at all on his part. Only our own lack of cutting edge hints at the eventual outcome; we have more of the possession but are painfully blunt, utterly reliant on either a worldy from distance that is never more than hinted at, a set piece of which there are few – Sierralta getting on the end of a Louza free kick perhaps our best chance – or threading a passing move through United’s deep-sitting defence. We manage this just once, Ince involved in playing Sissoko through but it’s on his weaker side, the keeper is out quickly and the chance is gone. Not the man you’d want on the end of a chance like that despite his fine winner in midweek but then arguably only Ince has a goalscoring profile of our starting eleven.

At the other end we look solid enough for the most part; James Abankwah takes on all comers and indulges in a couple of those fine surges forward that have clearly been encouraged. Ngakia digs in against former Watford target Siriki Dembélé; only when Ben Nelson is afforded a free header do we look in trouble. It’s noisy, even if the standard of the chants themselves remains patchy… there is, indeed, “one team in yellow” but it isn’t us. Tom Cleverley’s boisterous support is safer ground.

4- It’s a bloody hard watch though, a mundanely terrible game of football. There’s a bit of a nostalgia trip for those of us old enough to remember, since this is exactly what 1996/97 was like, our only non-promotion season as low as the third tier in 45 years and therefore the nadir of my and many others’ experience. Dull teams playing dull, blunt football in front of a small crowd whilst suffering a growing sense of impending lack of consequence. At least we got Keith Scott in on loan that season, mind.

Firmly in the Stuart Slater role is Rocco Vata, albeit earlier in his career and with plenty time to develop. Fun and exciting he can be and boy did we need a bit of both, but the noisy and increasingly insistent demands for his involvement both here and in general are way out of proportion to what he delivered in this and too many games to date. A great prospect for sure, and when paired with Kwadwo Baah giving opposition defenders too many places to look a more potent weapon but he’s not the second coming any more than Slater was.

5- “Nil nil, Louza red card” was the wry parting shot with Mike pre-game. Wrong on both counts, but not by an awful lot. The second half sees the sunshine playing even more of a role; the empty west side of the ground permitting the sun’s rays to hit the side defending the far end in the face. We’d flipped the sides at kick-off in the first half in the hope of capitalising as the sun lowered in the second and on several occasions opted for the lottery of a high ball lofted skywards towards the edge of the box. Francisco Sierralta was ever more prominent, dealing decisively with aerial balls at both ends of the pitch, but it was his central defensive partner who was to be involved in the game’s defining moments.

James Abankwah needs to accept the fact that life isn’t always fair. On being on the receiving end of an aggressive challenge midway through the half he took issue equally aggressively first with the officials, and then with his opponent earning himself what was to be an expensive yellow card. Not the first time… that his irritation with the challenge and the lack of censure that followed was completely justified is neither here nor there. You shut up and get on with it. As an aside it’s fashionable to blame Moussa Sissoko for lack of leadership but he was on the other side of the pitch; we have other leaders who needed to get in James’ ear.

His adversary was Przemyslaw Platecha, whose lack of progress has been a source of mild interest since a trip to St Andrews two years ago which Daughter 2 spent disdainfully sassing at his admittedly stupid haircut. His contributions since, both in games against us for different opponents and elsewhere, have been almost universally inconsequential, fannying around irrelevantly on the flank in the manner of someone befitting of such a fashion choice.

James Abankwah’s failing was to be tempted into a foul at all, given that the cost of not doing so would inevitably have been Placheta disappearing up his own backside and losing possession but that’s that lack of experience thing again. Instead, Abankwah grabbed at him on the way past, a clear foul but on first glance an extraordinarily harsh second yellow, aggravated by Placheta doing the endearing “waving a yellow card” thing, again without censure. Review of the replay forces a revision of opinion… not harsh, but completely absurd. It’s a cheap foul on the halfway line with plenty of cover (not to mention the fact that nothing involving Placheta constitutes a goalscoring opportunity unless it’s at the other end of the pitch). Everyone makes mistakes… Tom repeatedly owns his, players on both sides throughout the game made plenty, and of course we’d chosen to come at all. Robert Madley proudly joined the club with this absolute stinker.

It was compounded by Oxford scoring the game’s only goal in the window between Abankwah’s dismissal and the introduction of James Morris during which Moussa deputised at centre half, Tom later expressing aggravation at the lack of urgency suggested by the fourth official. We never looked like grabbing a point, the team looked tired and, for the first time, beaten in the closing minutes which were followed by a return to planet idiot as a vocal minority in the away end bawled, booed and waved fists at the visibly shattered Watford side applauding in front of them.

This was a game to be navigated given the circumstances, and against opposition this bad navigating it didn’t seem an unreasonable ambition. What the outcome highlights, as if it were necessary, is that whilst sneaking into the play-offs has remained an ongoing theoretical possibility, we’re in no position to take on the Premier League just yet in any case. In two weeks time we face Plymouth with players beginning to return in the shape of Mattie Pollock and Kwadwo Baah with a view to picking up momentum heading towards next season.

Yooorns.

Selvik 3, Ngakia 3, Larouci 2, *Sierralta 3*, Abankwah 2, Dele-Bashiru 3, Louza 3, Sissoko 3, Ince 3, Chakvetadze 2, Kayembe 2

Subs: Bayo (for Ince, 68) 2, Morris (for Sissoko, 84) NA, Andrews (for Ngakia, 84) NA, Vata (for Chakvetadze, 84) NA, Massiah-Edwards, Ramírez-Espain, Moulton, Wiley, Bond