Home Match Day Thread +++ 20/01/2018 OUFC v Bury match thread +++

[Craig]

Correct me if I'm wrong but did Henry also shush the crowd after he scored?. Looked like that on the TV but i could be wrong.

Yeah, he did. Can be clearly seen on the highlights:

http://www.skysports.com/football/oxford-utd-vs-bury/report/375512

 

[lerekdilley]

Hope he enjoys div2 ?

I’d imagine he’s still sore about being sent back after 1 game..

 

[yellowbow]

Well if there was any ‘shushing’ going on from manager and/or players maybe they’ll learn to wait until the job is completed in future. In a way I hope any criticism aimed at them does hurt and they use it to spur them on. Golden rule is though - actions speak louder than words. I’m sure no Oxford fan would mind having it rammed back down their throats with impressive winning performances on the field

 

[Colin B]

Think I might consider pulling the trigger after that performance.

Don't do it, think of your family.

 

[BigCrompy]

I think some of our fans only want a good old boy who will give us a team of hundred per centers, nine Mickey Lewis trier types plus a nippy guy up front. And Eastwood in goal.

Well...if only they could beat bottom-of-the-League Bury 1-0 or better...I think that’d be fine...

 

[Jerome'SAle]

What was that 'shushing' about?

 

[battman]

I think we need to give Pep until the end of the season. Under Appleton, I know the circumstances were somewhat different, but in the latter part of the season we really clicked. If we sack Pep now, who're we going to replace him with? A quick-fix manager who's probably only available because they failed at another club? If things don't improve, then we can say to Pep in the summer 'thanks but no thanks' and let him go on his way, then we'll have time to find his replacement.

 

[Cass63]

That was the MAINstand atmosphere.
The Kassam is s fuckin joke, the kiddy ultras have thrown the towel in, ultras my fuckin a**e, the fuckin chairman’s some sort of bi polar freak who one minute wants to sigh someone for f**k all the next minute he wants to spend £600,000 on a player who goes for £800,000, we are being mugged off.

 

[Lundinsponytail]

Since beating Bristol Rovers in mid October we have won 4, drawn 5 & lost 7 in the league.

We managed to beat Blackpool & Doncaster by very fine margins.
Plymouth went down to 10 men early giving us a penalty in the process that got us off the mark.
MK Dons was a good win, but let’s not forget that they had played 2 days earlier with the same team down to 9 men before half time. They were knackered.

It’s amazing (and lucky) that we are still 10th in the league!

That's 17 points from sixteen games. If we do that over the next sixteen games we will have 55 points going into Blackburn away. Not good.
There are such fundamental structural problems with the squad at the moment that the only thing we can do is hope that young Brannegan and Pekalski and Buckley Ricketts make a big difference.

The League table is shaping up very strangely. There is the top 3, the next 6 and then 13 clubs separated by not much more than 8 or 9 points. Adding to the confusion, early relegation candidates like Plymouth, Northampton and AFCW are picking up points, while early pacesetters such as us and Blackpool are sinking towards them. If this pattern continues (10th place currently has six points fewer than the average haul for this time of the year and 21st place has four more than the average) then when the relegation battle hots up there could be up to 10 teams worried about getting to an unusually high points tally.
To avoid being part of that scrum with six games to go, I reckon that we need 12 points from the next 11 games. That is 3 wins and 3 draws or 4 wins. Eminently do-able, of course, but that is the same number of wins that we have had in the last 16. Time to knuckle down. A change of manager right now is, dare I say it, almost too much of a risk. But I'd hope that Pep will start to gain a bit more urgency now that the weird irrelevant comparison point of comparing with last season's equivalent points tally has been quietly dropped from those painfully complacent post match interviews!

 

[HeyMcAleny]

What was that 'shushing' about?

Pep could hear the abuse and insults being shouted at him and our team, so when Henry scored he allegedly turned round and shushed the South stand generally.

Apparently some think this was childish.

I agree. He should have shown some passion and decked someone.

 

[uptheus]

He had enough of a pre-season to bring in his own bunch of crocs. That's his legacy. He picks the team, and he tells them what system to play.

I suppose that depends on how much he had to spend.

 

[PottersRightBoot]

Awful performance today but talk of sacking the manager is baloney. He’s just signed three new players, two of whom we haven’t seen.

I still maintain our injury luck has been terrible. Three of our best players out for ages - 1 international badly injured before he could even play a game.

As for the ‘shushing’ well if we’d won no one would have cared. Is this really a hanging offence ? Not in my book.

We will end up in mid table.

Bury were relegation fodder. Despite our awfulness we were still the better team.

 

[bazzer9461]

Pep has to go absolutely clueless no idea. We don’t have a decent striker so surely he should be looking but no he says we probably don’t need no-one else, guess what? You’re wrong Pep you haven’t a bloody clue what to do, you have infiltrated OUFC with crocks and has beens, you’ve undone
All the hard work that MAPP did in 6 months. You may have been alright as a coach but that’s your lot.
Do us OUFC fans a favour and tender your resignation so we can look for a more apt manager who can be in place at the end of the season to prepare for next season.

 

[bazzer9461]

Pep could hear the abuse and insults being shouted at him and our team, so when Henry scored he allegedly turned round and shushed the South stand generally.

Apparently some think this was childish.

I agree. He should have shown some passion and decked someone.

And some one would of decked him

 

[WokinghamYellow]

MApp must be turning in his grave at what’s happened to his team

 

[bazzer9461]

MApp must be turning in his grave at what’s happened to his team

Maybe turning in his bed with nightmares about what’s happening at Oxford

 

[lukehudson]

Embarrassing today, some stand out performances in the last few games (for the wrong reasons) for me are:

Mousinho, for weeks he has been poor, constantly trying to take on players on the edge of the box and giving the ball away. He also seems to lose out on a lot of personal duels which are costing us goals look at the second last week and the second from today, I would love to see peoples reaction if Martin did some of the stuff he did. He's our captain... Get Raglan or Dickie in asap.

Harsh on Canice but he just is not ready for this league, however is young and has plenty of time to improve so it's not really fair to judge him. He needs to go and get some games at a league or two lower and come back a better player for it.

James Henry. Seems to have a lot of confidence in himself for someone I have seen have about two good games this season, the celebration baffles me, you would think he was doing it to the away fans if you didn't know it was our fans behind the goal. Not the best way to get the fans on your side. Too predictable. Last 4 games when he was dropped: 7 points, Last 10 starts: 8 points.

Ruffels, since we have gone to 442 I think his performances have dropped off a fair bit and sometimes is a bit of a passenger in the game but it must be hard having to play with a different CM partner every week. Especially when depending on who is playing with means he will either be the one to sit or attack. Need to get a settled midfield to give the players the best chance.

Obika, has really benefited from the change in system and his performances in the first few games showed that he can be a good player for us. However the miss last week was shocking and ultimately cost at least a point. Today he showed nothing but wasn't helped by Mehmeti, they was either too far a part or then too close together and didn't strike up a partnership at all.

Performance was not good enough today and do not want to sound like I am making excuses for Pep but I must say we have struggled to field a settled eleven all season, pretty sure each week we have a player who isn't match fit or coming back from an injury in the team. As well as this today we was without Brannagan, Thomas, Hall, Rothwell, Nelson, Williamson & Pekalski four of those being long term injuries, any team would struggle without them.

We should now use Tuesday to get players who need minutes in the team and give players who have played a lot a rest.

In terms of the transfer window I think it is clear to see we still need another 2-3 players which may include a Hemmings recall, this is the perfect week to sign them as it is two weeks to the next league game and it gives them time to settle. Although I believe play-offs are gone if the club has ambition to go up they will make some more signings. Even if it's not to go up this season at least we will have settled players to mount a challenge next season.

 

[lerekdilley]

Henry is a Reading lad and probably grew up hating Oxford, would imagine he’s only here for convenience/location.

 

[Osei Yaw]

Lazy claim/post. Appleton inherited a demoralised bunch of has beens and never weres. He started disastrously, but from November - as he weeded out some of the worst non-achievers and tweaked his system - we gradually improved. In Jan he brought in Roofe, MacDonald, Baldock and Skarz. All very good at that level. By the end of the season we were a team on the up.
Whereas, Pep inherited a youthful team of achievers, who just 2 or 3 months beforehand had been hammering Millwall away.

This is the 18 man squad that hammered Millwall. How many has Clotet inherited?

• Eastwood
• Ribeiro
• Nelson
• Raglan
• Skarz
• Ruffels
• Lundstram
• Maguire
• Carroll
• McAleny
• Johnson

Substitutes

• Hemmings
• Edwards
• Rothwell
• Hall
• Long
• Dunkley
• Stevens

2 were on loan (Edwards, McAleny)
2 were out of contract (Maguire, Dunkley)
1 was released before Clotet took over (Skarz)
2 were sold to teams in a higher division (Johnson, Lundstram)

So that leaves 11. Of those 11...
1 had to retire because of injuries (Ribeiro)
4 are currently injured (Nelson, Hall, Long, Rothwell)
1 is back on the bench after being injured in pre season (Raglan)

So that leaves 5 players.
Eastwood, Ruffels and Carroll played today.

Hemmings is out on loan a league below after scoring a handful of league goals here.

Stevens is out on loan and is a young keeper.

So, Clotet didn't really inherit that team, did he? 7 were never available to him, and of the 11 that he still has, 4 are injured.

 

[Northstandboy]

My player ratings:

Eastwood -6 Didn’t have a huge amount today but, not sure if it was my imagination as I was watching for an sign of him looking unsettled, he seemed to lack his usual composure

Carrol - 5 Don’t get me wrong, I like him and I’m sure he has a huge future in the game but if we want to push on in this league we need better at right back. I just don’t think it’ll ultimately be his position. There were times today when it was crying out for him to bomb on down the line but he sat back

Martin - 6 Didn’t really do much wrong, but where the hell were the centre backs for Bury’s Winner??!

Mousinho - 5 Dwells far too long on the ball and lacked discipline at times with verbals to the ref. I thought he was going to talk his way to a red card when he was booked. I feel again that we need to do better at centre back if we want to be successful

Tiendalli - 8 People may not agree but he was my MOM. Worked hard, got the assist and won some important tackles

Henry - 7 Started off shaker but kept going and was one of the few really trying to make something happen when the wheels started to fall off

Mowatt - 6 Would have given him a 7 with his early endeavours but he faded out of it after the introduction of Ledson for some reason. He seemed to get lost with the muddled formation and got pushed to the periphery when maybe he should have had a bit more conviction and taken control of things?

Ruffels- 6 Steady game, nothing more nothing less really...

Buckley-Ricketts 7 A little raw with a lot to learn about men’s football but bags of potential. It’s nice to have a player who genuinely excites again

Obika - 4 Sorry but really poor. So off the pace

Mehmeti- 4 To be fair he did try to make runs off the ball that weren’t seen but I just don’t think he’s the answer to our striker problems

Ledson - 6 Good to see him come on and out subsequent problems weren’t really down to him

Napa - unfair to rate him as things had gone to the fairies by the time he came on

All in all a really flat atmosphere and a totally disjointed performance not helped by Peps balls ups and a total lack of striker options.

Do you not think Tiendalli cost is the first with that awful back pass to Eastwood?