Ian Greaves and the glory before the glory

The Glory Years were at their best during the two championship winning seasons in 1984 and 1985. But it didn't happen by accident, and it wasn't even all down to Jim Smith. Behind every great team, is another great team. This is the story of the unsung heroes of The Glory Years.

Judge, Trewick, Shotton, Briggs, Langan, Brock, Hebberd, Houghton, Phillips, Aldridge, Charles. THE team of THE seminal moment of THE era. But one that doesn't tell the whole story. By the time we'd beaten QPR at Wembley the glory years were effectively over. Life in Division 1 was hard, we struggled every week. We plodded on for 3 more years, but it was hard graft during a miserable period in English football. Being there was not as fun as getting there. Here's a story about getting there.

In the early 1980s Britain was in a state of collapse. Margaret Thatcher was affecting an economic revolution away from the arcane structures of the state-centred industrial revolution towards one based on personal ownership of the country's assets. It was a painful transition; assets were sold into the private sector, obstructive unions crushed; while the private sector, lauded to fill the gap left by a shrinking state sector, struggled to accommodate the influx of poorly skilled labour that was ill-equipped to cope in the emerging global technology markets from Japan and US. Unemployment tipped over 3 million and continued to rise.

Football, in particular, was feeling the pinch; by tradition it was the past-time of the working classes, but their priorities were elsewhere. In feeding themselves and finding jobs. Into that vacuum came a disaffected youth. Football was the home for systemic hooliganism. Facilities were dire and there was little to attract people through the turnstiles, let alone to attract benevolent billionaires. Oxford, highly reliant on the custom of those working at the Cowley car plant in particular, were suffering. Cowley was a particularly militant wing of British Leyland; at the vanguard of fighting the privatisation of the car industry. But the grim reality was that Cowley was a dirty industrial wreck and British Leyland and then Austin Rover couldn't compete with efficient, reliable mass production from Japan and Germany. What resulted was a near-decade long decline. Something new was needed, whether it was Thatcherism or something else. While it fought its own demons, Britain and British football perished.

Football would eventually become one of Thatcher's arch enemies. She couldn't reform it; it was a hive of villainy that she couldn't get under control. It may have been resistant to the zealots of right wing economics, but its viability was eroding along with the traditional British working class. The impact on Oxford, and everywhere else, was falling gates. Oxford were seriously at risk of being on the wrong side of the poverty trap; those at the top of the game could survive through inertia, while those at the bottom faced a constant battle against extinction.

By the end of 1980 Oxford were falling apart; they were 22nd in the third division with no money. They had become reliant on the club's lottery, which at its peak was pulling in upwards of £5,000 a week; but such profitable enterprises inevitably attract competition and soon the market was so crowded that the club suffered. Match day income wasn't going to compensate the loss; in November of that season the club attracted its lowest ever league gate against Chester.

Just before Christmas Bill Asprey, the manager, was fired after steering the club to near inevitable relegation. In his place was Ian Greaves, a former Manchester United full-back under Matt Busby who had been fortunate enough to have not been on the plane during the Munich air disaster in 1958 due to injury. Greaves had won a championship medal two years earlier as an understudy to Bill Foulkes. After the disaster, he became a bit part player in the fabled Busby Babes. A third choice full-back by the time of the disaster, he was part of the team that improbably made the 1958 FA Cup final only to be beaten by Bolton.

On retiring he took up coaching, ascending to manage Huddersfield in 1964. Learning from his time under Matt Busby, Greaves nurtured some of the great talents of the time; most notably Frank Worthington. When he moved onto Bolton, and to illustrate the impact Busby (and, then Greaves) ultimately had on the Premier League era, he brought through Peter Reid and Sam Allardyce alongside Worthington and took Bolton to the top flight in 1977. At one point he was touted as a possible manager back at Manchester United, but was fired from Bolton as their fortunes stalled along with their limited resources.

With Oxford floundering and relegation becoming a likelihood, Greaves was appointed after a spell as assistant manager at Hereford. His first game on Boxing day 1980 was a 1-0 win over Charlton, who were top of the league and on a run of 13 wins and a draw out of the previous 14. It was the first time Oxford had avoided defeat in five games. They followed it up with a win at Reading, a draw at Rotherham and a 2-1 win at the Manor over Colchester, the first time they'd scored more than one goal in 16 games.

Greaves inherited a rugged but unspectacular squad, a classic of the the lower league type. Already in situ were a young centre-back pairing of Gary Briggs and Malcolm Shotton. Shotton had been brought in by Asprey at the beginning of the 1980/1 season from non-league football as a 23 year old. Shotton had nearly given up the game when he was released by Leicester, and had a job in a hosiery factory ('stitching knickers' as the press described it during the glory years). He would actually end the season as the club's top goalscorer with 7 goals, albeit 4 were from the spot. Briggs, two years younger, had been fished out of Middlesborough reserves in 1978; the second player whose fee (£12,500) was decided by a tribunal.

Looking for goals, in Greaves' third game in charge, blooded 19 year-old Andy Thomas, a graceful striker who would eventually gain a reputation as a super sub. Thomas joined Oxford's beleaguered attack picking up his first goal in his third game against Sheffield United. He replaced Joe Cooke up front, the club's captain, who had bagged just 3 goals all season. Greaves tried Cooke as a defender, partnering Gary Briggs, but his days were numbered, and was transferred to Mansfield Town at the end of the season.

Thomas' partner up front was Peter Foley, a stalwart who had already been at the club for five years. A lower league Geoff Boycott, he was a diesel of a striker scoring with a slow unstinting grind. Foley scored 90 goals in 8 years, one of the club's highest scorers, and yet only ended up the club's top scorer on two occasions.

Greaves had also adopted Keith Cassells, a former postman. He was a busy striker who had played at Wembley (which the TV loved on FA Cup days) and had threatened to rot in non-league until Watford, and then Oxford, took him on. His transfer from Watford had been as a makeweight in a deal that had taken Les Philips to the Hornets in a then record fee. Cassells arrived just before Asprey's departure. His start was sluggish, failing to score in his first 10 games before breaking his duck at Walsall in March and then bagging a couple more before the end of the season.

Having lost 16 times before Greaves' arrival, the club lost only 3 more times and ended the season safely in 14th. A miraculous performance given the predicament they found themselves in.

The close season was quiet, only Ollie Kearns had been signed, a sign of the stricken state the club was in. The club were losing £2k-£3k a week and posted a £170,000 loss despite the £100,000 income from Philips' transfer. New players, and with it, any ambition, was a luxury the club could not afford.

The 1981/2 season opened with three consecutive wins, Cassells scoring twice, then 4 wins in the opening 5 games. The wheels fell off in September with three consecutive defeats but we won away at Millwall before going on a run of eleven games when either Thomas or Cassells scored.

Amidst this run Greaves introduced another Oxford teenager; Mark Wright for his league debut to take the place of the injured Gary Briggs in a home game against Bristol City*. He had played for the first team in the FA Cup the year before under Asprey. Wright was wiry, but unlike Shotton and Briggs had an elegance on the ball that set him apart from others. It would be the only game he played under Greaves, but his growing reputation was to prove significant.

Another player building a fearsome reputation was Cassells. In November he scored nine goals in five games including including a hat-rick in an FA Cup replay against Aldershot, and another one against Bournemouth in the 3rd round. In the fourth round, we were drawn away to 1st Division Brighton.

The cup run and good form was overshadowed by a more sobering issue. The threat of liquidation was looming, it even had a date: 11 January 1982; 12 days before the Brighton cup game. The inland revenue and Barclays Bank were forming a pincer movement on the club. A key revenue stream; the club's lottery had collapsed. The total debt was around £200,000 but even more significant was the bank's threat to stop honouring cheques if they hadn't paid off their overdraft by the end of 1981.

In desperation, the club used a distant contact of the club's assistant to the secretary to contact flamboyant millionaire Robert Maxwell who lived up the road at Headington Hill. According to Jim Smith, Maxwell's attraction was not Oxford, but the opportunity to move grounds, merge it with Reading and, in a separate deal, buy Manchester United, which he tried to do. He was nothing if not ambitious. All three objectives would have been shrewd moves for Maxwell moving into the Premier League era. Maxwell insisted that he was being altruistic, which given his eccentricities is entirely possible.

In the short term Maxwell was the saviour. He fended off the threats of the bank and took over as Chairman on the 6th January, saving the club by five days.

The club had survived and on the 23rd January Oxford headed for the Goldstone Ground to play Brighton in the cup. Brighton had finished 14th, their highest ever finish, the year before and their team contained many of the players that would play in the FA Cup final against Manchester United a year later, including future Oxford captain Steve Foster.

3 years before Hillsborough and 10 years before the Premier League, things were different. Big teams played in ramshackle victorian shitholes, small teams played in small ramshackle Victorian shitholes. There were no alien and intimidating enormodomes. It would be another five years before Middlesborough built the Riverside to trigger the grand transformation of football stadiums.

Pitches were boglands by January, not the product of precise science they are today. Attitude played had far greater influence over results. Oxford emerged in front of 3000 followers resplendent in all yellow, with Adidas shirts and socks and Admiral shorts. For the first time they had a shirt sponsor - Saturday Journal. Greaves' underdogs started like a freight train. Thomas tested keeper Moseley in the first minute. Wingers Smithers and Jones, who would later join Swindon, tested the keeper then Jones grazed the bar. At the back Shotton, Briggs and Burton marshalled the Brighton attack.

The breakthrough came in the 19th minute; Cassells lifting the ball over the oncoming keeper for, fittingly, his 19th goal of the season. Shortly before half-time the lead was extended with Peter Foley. Foley scored again shortly after the restart. Oxford had swept the Seagulls aside. It was the first giant killing against a top flight club for a decade and the biggest home defeat a first division club at the hands of opponents outside the top two divisions for 22 years. Peter Foley later described it as the turning point for the club.

A week later at Walsall, Oxford won again and the promotion bid was really on track.

The following Wednesday, as Oxford prepared for a home derby at the Manor against Reading rumours were rife that Greaves was about to be poached by top flight Wolves, who had sacked their manager John Barnwell the month before. The club were unable to confirm or deny the story due to the fact that Greaves wasn't under contract and not obliged to give any notice. Behind the scenes Greaves, an old school manager, and Maxwell, a man used to getting his way clashed almost immediately. Maxwell took Greaves down a peg or two for losing his temper in a board meeting, according to Jim Smith. Greaves wasn't prepared to hang around to see the glory days.

The crowds queued down the London Road waiting to get in still unsure as to whether Greaves had left or not. The kick-off delayed, eventually nearly 10,000 people rammed into the Manor with coach, Greaves' assistant, Roy Barry in the dug out. Greaves had gone the day before. The club, apparently in shock, laboured to a 1-0 win.

Greaves was in charge for 54 games, a fraction over a year, the crippling financial constraints had meant he'd brought virtually nobody into the club. He'd taken the club to the edges of promotion and destroyed a first division team on their own ground. Had he stayed, with Maxwell's money, it may well have been he and not Jim Smith that took us to the top division and Wembley. Instead, what he achieved was to stem the slide and with no money and virtually no new players, turn the team around to the point where they could compete.

His legacy, however, shouldn't be under estimated. He made average players good. He put nearly 1000 people, 18%, on our home gate in the middle of a recession, allowing us to survive just long enough make the Brighton fixture and attract Maxwell. He'd fashioned Briggs and Shotton into a formidable centre-back partnership which had took us to Wembley four years later. When Smith arrived he wanted to replace them, but later described them as the most importnt component of our back-to-back championships.

In Thomas and Brock, we had two of the finest home grown players in the history of the club; Brock played for the England under-21s and was part of the Wembley winning team while Thomas was an unused substitute. Perhaps his greatest contribution was in turning Keith Cassells into enough of a prolific goalscorer to attract the attention of Southampton three months after Greaves left. Cassells was sold on, and later Wright taken to the Dell in exchange for winger George Lawrence and enigmatic midfielder Trevor Hebberd, who would go onto be man of the match at Wembley. Although Cassells never really made it at Southampton; a team which contained Kevin Keegan, Peter Shilton and Mick Channon, Greaves made him good enough for long enough to make him a saleable asset.

The rest of Greaves' team was gone within 6 months.

Greaves died in 2009, there was a muted response to his death from most Oxford fans - there was no special tribute on the front of the programme as the had done with Maurice Evans. most of whom will be unaware of how important he had been in setting us up for glory.


* incidentally, although I'd been to Oxford games before visiting my grandparents in Abingdon, I generally consider this my first game as a proper fan. My dad, seeing Wright, predicted that he would play for England. A prediction he still reminds everyone of today.

The discarded dozen

The list of players released has been, well, released. The anticipated bloodbath has happened with twelve of the sixteen out of contract players being shown the door.

There’s usually a feeling of cleansing when clubs announce the list of players they plan to release and keep at the end of season. Over a season, a squad becomes a ragtag of core players and makeweights, short term deals and those and very end or very start of their careers. Usually, it’s a case of plaining off the rough edges of the squad and then moving forward.

There’s often a great deal of anticipation as to who might stay and who might go, but more often than not, the actual list is somewhat of an anticlimax because anyone who kept half an eye on the club in recent months could get a pretty reasonable feel for who is out of favour and who is to be kept.

Less so this year, after all, it’s only a week since we found out who our manager is to be for the next 12 months. While the squad and season quietly fell apart amidst the increasing vitriol and turmoil of a year unfulfilled, it was largely impossible to gather precisely who might be kept, because it was impossible to gather who might be making that decision.
A lot of that was cleared up with Ian Lenagan’s statement on the re-appointment of Chris Wilder. The club was to refocus on long term growth, developing youth and selecting players up to the rigours a 50+ game season. One or two must have known at that point that their game was up.

Some were more obvious than others; Justin Richards was effectively brought in to cover James Constable’s absence after her was sent off against Wimbledon and Josh Parker always felt like the classic Wilder makeweight. Similarly Luke McCormick was always a short term solution, but with Ryan Clarke is on his way back and Max Crocombe quickly finding his feet and with Wayne Brown focussing on coaching, while always being available if needed, the goalkeeping position looks well covered.

Simon Heslop never really offered consistency throughout his time at Oxford, but let’s face it, few lower league players do, but his fall from grace this season has been quite spectacular. Harry Worley never seemed to do a lot wrong but clearly Chris Wilder didn’t like something about what he saw and he fell away under a pile of other centre-backs.

Tony Capaldi seemed to gently oscillate between injury and disinterest. Capaldi is what I call ‘soft footed’; often he looks lazy and uninvolved, nothing seems terribly dynamic about him. That said, I don’t believe any player is capable of being a professional footballer by being genuinely lazy and it is often that Capaldi’s tactical and spatial awareness gave him time to think about his next move. His injury record, however, hardly allowed him to tick the box marked robust.

Another soft footer was Tom Craddock, but while I think he was as good finisher and technically as good a player as anyone at the club, in the end he was brought in to score lots of goals. That, and his sullen attitude towards the end of this season was always going to play against him. 

The decisions around Liam Davis and Jon-Paul Pittman were both marginal calls. Pittman seemed blighted by injury and Davis was a bit in and out during his second season (but then, who wasn’t?). However, when they did play, they, by-and-large performed. Both are approaching 27, which I think may be a key to the decision. 27 is the age at which players should be peaking. On that basis, you should expect Davis and Pitman to get better over the next two years, more than likely they will flatline or decline. A one year option on either player continues the strategy of short-termism that Lenagan is keen to get away from.

For me, the most surprising name on the list is Damian Batt, although his tweets after the game against Accrington seemed to portray a sense that he knew he wouldn’t get a new contract offer. Batt was fantastic in our promotion season combining pace down the flanks with excellent delivery. In his first season in the football league he continued that form, giving him a place on that year’s League 2 Team of the Year. The consequence was our general naivety at the back meant we shipped goals. Batt returned a more conservative player and that’s pretty much where he’s stayed ever since. Batt, like Davis and Pittman, is another who career will gently begin to decline in the next couple of years (he’s 29 in September). As he never let anyone down Wilder may have considered him for another year, but that wouldn’t be in line with the new direction the club is going onto.

And finally, our new marquee signings from 2 years; Michael Duberry and Peter Leven. Michael Duberry’s Oxford career followed a similar path to Phil Gilchrist when he came back to the club in 2006. On arrival, he looked fit and healthy, but it was evident that it was touch and go as to whether his body would survive the duration of his contract. I suspect one of the attractions of Oxford to Duberry was that it was a club in the south willing to give him a 2 year contract. Kelvin Thomas took a risk in signing him, and it worked for a while; Duberry shored up the defence and was a dominant presence throughout 2011/12, then the wheels fell off as it was always going to at some point. His season was riddled with injuries, some major some minor, put plenty of them and one after the other. Thomas might have punted to offer him another year, had he been in place, but Lenagan was never going to take that gamble.

When Lenagan said that players had been signed in recent years without medicals, the words Peter Leven seemed drift around in the air. When Leven signed people seemed stunned that he’d dropped down a division; in fact, some expecting him to go up to the Championship. While his talent is undeniable, something was clearly wrong; had the club broke the bank signing him or had taken a gamble that others were less willing to take by signing him despite underlying injury issues? Leven seemed to be the pinnacle of Kelvin Thomas’ indulgences, and when he was on form it was a masterstroke. His goal at Port Vale still plays in slow motion in my head, like I was in the presence of god. Sadly, injuries became a bigger and bigger issue, he didn’t seem like the kind of player who recovered well, showing ample talent for putting on weight, and last season he seemed almost wholly reduced to dead ball situations. In the Lenagan era, special-team players aren’t welcome. 

The Squad in review - 2012-2013

 In less than 24 hours, the great cull of our squad will have begun. So, just before two-thirds of the squad become ex-players, let's look back on a wretched 9 months and see how the squad has fared.

It's time to pack our metaphorical bucket and spade and head for the metaphorical beach, the season is over.

It’s customary at this time of year to pick through the bones of the squad. That seems a bit of waste of time this year as half the squad look set to leave and the other half seemed unable to string together more than half-a-dozen games before heading for the treatment room with a grazed knee.

Jake Wright was majestic throughout the season, and therefore becomes the first player to win Oxblogger Player of the Year along with Player’s Player of the Year and Supporters’ Player of the Year. I’m sure he’d be delighted if he ever found out about that. One day, I’ll buy a trophy or something to mark the honour.

Thankfully, I think we’ll see Wright playing at the Kassam next year. He's intimated a desire to 'play at a higher level' (i.e. leave) with the normal safety caveats of loving the club and all that jazz. He’s still under contract so would command a fee. Even though he's only 27, I still think he's too old for a Championship club to take him on, even if they were looking to a League 2 team with a negative goal difference to solve their defensive issues. Few in League 1 or 2 are likely to spend the required amount to bring him in.

To my mind, there were really only two other contenders for the title of player of the year. Sean Rigg got the games in and was solid and reliable throughout; although his end product was lacking. It's somewhat ironic that his last contributions to our season were the lung busting run down the flank for Alfie Potter’s goal against Rochdale followed by his tap in against Accrington, that is, plenty of end product. Darn that man.

Potter probably had his best season in a yellow shirt, but his form and confidence faded in the bog of our pitch mid-season. Both Potter and Rigg suffer from that thing with wingers; that their job - providing goals - means that they're always likely to fail more than they succeed. So, on a game by game basis they can be frustrating, it's only when considered over a period of time, when you've had the chance to edit out the frustrating times, that you realise the contribution they make. For this read: Joey Beauchamp.

Of the rest, Andy Whing seemed to be the difference between the team being in and out of form; he just didn’t play enough, James Constable had a solid but unspectacular season; the prospects of him racking up 20+ goals in a season seem increasingly remote, but his presence for the fans is important. Damian Batt was similarly solid, Ryan Clarke, when fit, seemed to lack something of the sparkle of previous seasons; perhaps a sign that he was carrying his shoulder injury for some time before he jacked it in for the year.

Age seemed to catch up with Michael Duberry though he let nobody down when he did play. Peter Leven didn’t seem fit at any point and only really contributed from deadballs and set pieces. I have a soft spot for Michael Raynes who never lacked in endeavour.

Others' performances were fleeting in the main, Liam Davis and John Paul Pitman played reasonably in between bouts of injury and Scott Davies' brief flurry of appearances demonstrated a robustness which was a virtue others weren't able to offer. Tom Craddock had sublime moments accetuated with periods of almost other-worldly distinerest and Simon Heslop looked like he wanted to be anywhere but a football pitch.

Jake Wright aside, the squad was ridden with injuries and patchy form. Both Chris Wilder and Ian Lenagan have talked about a squad of youth and robustness, it's fair to say there wasn't much of either on show over the last nine months.

The end of an era

4.50pm on Saturday saw the end of the season. Some people thought it would be the end of Chris Wilder. It certainly felt like the end of something.

In the end we were just four points off, or, if you like, the margin of seeing out the game and not conceding at home to Morecambe and scoring rather than hitting both posts in the last minute at Barnet. And other moments, of course, but let's not think too much about it.

We're two points closer to the play-offs than last year, but three less in total, but with a 3 goal improvement in goal difference, but still falling short of our target of play-offs or promotion. We can ague endlessly, and probably pointlessly, as to whether that represents an improvement or not because there are also circumstances to consider. Those circumstances. I think it's fair to say that even if we had sneaked into the play-offs it would have been a success that ultimately papered over the cracks.

Saturday's 3-0 win over Accrington represented the end of an era. Not, as of Thursday, the Wilder era, because he's still here. Nope, Ian Lenagan's speech at the press conference that announced his new contract effectively acted as the eulogy to the end of the Kelvin Thomas era.

What Thomas did for the club was absolutely necessary, we wallowed waiting for success, so he relentlessly signed the best of the rest of the Conference; Midson, Green, Crieghton, Tonkin, Clarke and Bulman. It allowed us to capitalise on our key asset - our comparative size. The strategy continued for two more years after we were promoted.

While it smacks of cripplingly poor planning, it's no accident that we have 16 players out of contract this summer. This represents the slowing down of Thomas' overheating machine. In our first season back in the Football League, we aggressively signed up players in the same manner we had in the last season of the Conference. Players like Heslop and Worley, on three year contracts. The following year; we went for marquee signings on shorter, 2 year, contracts; Leven and Duberry, for example. Along the way, corners were cut with medicals and the like. The long term, even the mid-term was sacrificed for the short term. Now all those contracts have expired in one heap all at the same time.

Thomas' strategy relied on one thing; it had to work. Imagine if we'd gone to Wembley and frozen, or if Isiah Rankine hadn't skewed his shot past the wrong side of the post at 2-1? If we hadn't been promoted, then the following season would have introduced new pressures - the perception that we had a team of chokers, the need to rebuild - and the emergence of Crawley Town and then Fleetwood. We may well have still been struggling to get up, Chris Wilder would surely have gone, along with Thomas. Not only that, our finances would have been drained by failed 'big name' conference players.

So many teams try to accelerate their progress through the same strategy and find themselves in an appalling state. Leeds United's spending was predicated on numbers that were never going to add up. Portsmouth's ambitions seemed reliant on moving to a new stadium - and then attaining super club status - to balance the books after years of insane spending which saw them, at least, pick up the FA Cup in 2008. Plymouth were relying on Premier League football and the 2010 World Cup bid after they jettisoned themselves up the divisions with heavy investment. We'll play Portsmouth and Plymouth next season as equals, and there's not a lot of evidence to suggest they've hit the bottom yet.

The most difficult thing about this strategy is knowing when to stop; Portsmouth are so deeply in the crap that they're still throwing anchors out to slow themselves down. For us, the breaks were slammed on last summer when Sean Rigg became the only meaningful signing of the summer. Thomas must have known the game was up when it became clear that he wasn't going to be able to make 5-6 significant signings so he threw in the towel. Ian Lenagan had switched off the machine, the flow of cash. It's just taken 12 months to finally come to a halt.

There's no doubt that the Thomas-era has not only been necessary, it's been memorable; there was Wembley, of course and beating Swindon three times alongside individual moments such as Peter Leven's goal against Port Vale. But Thomas was the bloke in the pub who gets the rounds in has loads of great stories, but ultimately gets himself into pointless arguments that can leave a bad taste in the mouth at the end of the night. Great for a night out, not someone who will do the washing up if he lived with you.

As spectacular as it was, Thomas wasn't planning on hanging around long enough to go through the painstaking process of finding consistency. When a problem came along, the answer was to sign players, often on loan, until the problem went away. The problem usually went away when the permanent players that were originally the problem came back into form. What he didn't do was learn from the experience and rectify the underlying systemic issues.

This season we've seen the youth team become much more than a page in the programme that you glance after conceding the second goal. The woman's team is now a real part of the club with named players and people tracking their progress. They look set to prosper now they've been accepted into the Women's Super League 2. The new era is set to be less spectacular, but perhaps more interesting. The thing is, I like interesting, I find it interesting. Not everyone does, of course, what the more considered approach is designed to provide is consistency over a long term. And that consistency, we hope will bring real success.

Wilder in

So it's settled then, Chris Wilder is going staying. Not the scenario that anyone foresaw. But the statement about Wilder and the club's future says a lot about the club going forward.

Well, I don't think anyone expected that, as someone said on Twitter, you don't call press conferences to say that managers are staying.

It says quite something that they did; one thing they teach you at journalism school is that something isn't news if opposite is a surprise. So, the news that a man stays in his job shouldn't be news because the opposite (that he's been fired) is the surprise.

I don't think anyone expected to hear Wilder was staying. If nothing else, the economic argument; that him staying would impact season ticket sales, seemed to be enough to see him go. I've been challenged on this. Say we have 3000 season ticket holders (I don't know if that's right, but just say) how many would renew out of habit? I would, and pretty much everyone that sits around me would. I reckon as many as 80% would renew regardless of who was the manager. That leaves, perhaps, £70,000 which could be lost to 'floating' season ticket holders. Firing Wilder and recruiting a replacement could be a costly business - research suggests as much as 150% of that person's salary. So the simple equation is one of lost revenue versus recruitment costs. Perhaps the financial argument isn't so strong.

Which brings us onto football. The statement on the club website admits the 'upward curve' has 'flattened out'. Sure enough, we're 10 points behind where we were last season. Some of which might reasonably be explained by injuries and the appalling state of our pitch. Our poor home form does appear to be at the core of this season's problem and it does appear that the one of the key factors behind the poor state of the pitch - London Welsh - may soon disappear.

Another factor to consider is that in the past people have compared our comparative lack of success to those who have also recently ascended from the Conference. Many have enjoyed continued success after their promotion, but we haven't rampaged in the same way. But of the 12 teams promoted from the Conference since 2006, five go into Saturday's final round of fixtures facing the prospect of being relegated back to the Conference. And we're not one of them. It's not a definitive argument supporting Wilder, but if we're benchmarking our success against our peers, then we could be in a significantly worse position.

The reason why this is important is that it highlights that those focussed on long term steady growth tend to prosper more than those who enjoy fluctuations in success. In the end, what goes up, usually comes down and you can argue that we've now left our former Conference brethren for the establishment of the football league. There is strong evidence that steadier clubs are beginning to see dividends in the current economic climate. Why is German football coming to the fore? Because the Spanish and English leagues are one a downward slope after a period of booming success. The German's have just continued to be German.

This is tortoise and hare stuff; in the economy is penalising the hares who have boomed in boom times and dived in the dip, the tortoises are coming through to steal the prizes.

What is interesting about the statement is that Lenagan appears to have generally reduced Wilder's influence within the club. There's some dispute as to whether he was on a rolling contract or still had 12 months to go (I'm fairly sure that BBC Radio Oxford said he was still under contract beyond the end of the season). The statement says he's been 're-appointed' on a contract which the club were at pains to say is fixed term with options in favour of the club. Everything about it suggests that the new deal puts control much more into the hands of Lenagan and the board.

The statement develops this further; emphasising the focus on sports science within the club and developing talent. Everything points to a steadier, long term development of the club, more corporate, more cohesive, more German, if you like. This is not a bad thing for Chris Wilder. It takes the emphasis away from the English obsession with the cult of the manager as being the only thing that influences results. It steps away from the nihilistic strategies of signing 'big names' on big wages in the hope of gaining short term success.

The criticism I have of Lenagan is that he's allowed this to go on too long. If Chris Wilder knew he was staying; he been showing no evidence at all to suggest that this was the case. His body language smacked of someone whose days were numbered. In short, he's been treated abysmally.

But, I like the vision, Lenagan the chairman frustrates me with his poor PR skills. His statements are good, but they're slow, poorly timed and patchy leaving chasms of silence into which speculation grows. As an owner, I like him. It appeals to me that we might see success in 2-3 years at Oxford United with 6-7 players playing regularly for the first team developed from the youth scheme. Most fans love this as a concept, there's nothing they like supporting a team of local players. Sadly, few clubs are brave enough to see the strategy through. Could we actually be the one to do it?

The state we're in - off the pitch

As is customary at this time of year, it's time to pick apart the comings and goings of the season. To kick things off, as a rare end of season treat, Myles Francis has gone where many fear to tread and trawled through the latest set of accounts to find out, off the pitch, the state we're in.

Well, the Oxford United's accounts for the year ended 30 June 2012 landed with a thump a couple of weeks ago announcing a headline grabbing £1m loss. But what do they tell us about the state of the club's finances, and do they give us any clues as to the likelihood of Chris Wilder being at the club beyond the end of this season.

Let's start with that headline figure. A loss on the year of £1,017,504. That's 58 and a half discounted Rolexs from Alexander Dubel. Whichever way you look at it, that's a huge figure for a business with a turnover of just £3.2m, and a third higher than Ian Lenegan said at the last fans forum was to be expected.

The media reports have compared this to the previous year's loss of £295k. Actually, the increase is worse than that. What has been largely overlooked is that the accounts for June 2011 included an “exceptional item” relating to service charge arrears on the KasStad of £297,697. Without this, the club would've made a small profit of approximately £55k. So in one season we have swung from being nominally profitable to losing £1m. Ouch.

But what has caused this? Turnover remained near enough identical to the previous year, so the hit has come in increased outgoings. The biggest increase is a £700k uplift in “Direct operating costs”. The Directors' report which prefaces the accounts puts this down to increased player related costs resulting from “a terrible sequence of injuries”, and the consequent need to bolster the squad. Clearly, the ten players brought in during the course of the season would have added a fair amount. However, the wage cap in League Two limits wages to 60% of turnover. In our case, that means roughly £1.92m per year. The received wisdom is that we have been operating fairly close to the wage cap over the past couple of years, which does raise the question of, if so, how could we increase the amount spent by £700k? Without the figures for the wage bill (which used to be in the accounts a couple of years ago) it's hard to probe this further. There is reason to believe that the club's explanation is largely correct, and I'll come on to this again shortly.

A further £315k increase in costs comes under the heading of “Administrative expenses”. £150k of that can be explained by the transfer of the youth development set-up back into the club from the stand alone Youth and Community Trust.

So, how are these losses being covered? Well, the club had an overdraft of £45k when there was none the previous year. But the most significant figure is that the loan from Woodstock Partners Ltd increased from £3.3m to £4.5m. Fortunately, this is a “soft” loan and interest is not being charged.

And where does this leave the club? At 30th June 2012, the club was effectively carrying a debt of £6m, and comments made by Ian Lenagan this season would suggest that figure will be even bigger by June 2013. Without doubt, carrying a debt which is roughly equivalent to two years' turnover is a worry. On the positive side, there is no indication from the Lenagans that they are seeking to pull out. At least in the short term. Suffice to say, the club simply cannot continue to make these sort of losses. Stating the bleeding obvious, it's not sustainable without an owner willing to burn a lot of cash. It's fairly safe to say that Ian Lenegan isn't that sort of owner and is seeking to take the club upwards to maximise income and make the club sustainable.

Which brings us on nicely to the manager's position. As well as the failure to make the play-offs for a second successive season, the board will have to look very closely at the resources which have been provided to Chris Wilder and what he has done with those. Players such as Peter Leven, Michael Duberry, and Tom Craddock will be on very good salaries for League Two, but what have they contributed? Injuries and fitness issues have seen relatively little return on the investment made in them. In Duberry's favour is that his experience provides a great opportunity to our young players to learn from, and he is said to be very good at sharing this. I'd also give Craddock a little slack as he has been largely played out of position (in exactly the same way Jack Midson was), but some of his body language has hardly shown a player chomping at the bit to prove himself of worth.

Then there is the lack of opportunity given to our emerging youth talent. The perception is that Wilder would rather bring in a journeyman loan player than promote from the youth team, thereby spending more money. Considering the success of the U18s this season, with the emergence of players such as Marsh, Roberts, and Crocombe, this would not have gone unnoticed by the board.

So, we have a manager who significantly overspent last season and failed to make the play-offs, has been provided with a solid budget for this season and failed to make the play-offs, and failed to utilise the young assets already at the club in favour of loan signings such as Sean McGinty, Daniel Boateng, Andy Howarth, and Danny Philliskirk. Are the board going to ignore all that? I doubt it. And just in case they have any doubts, Jim Rosenthal has come out in support of Wilder....

What did Thatch do for Oxford United?

The funeral of Margaret Thatcher might as well have been the funeral of the 80s. That was our decade, as distastful as it may feel; Oxford United's glory years were Thatcherite. So what's her lasting legacy on the club?

Whilst it galls me to say it, Thatcherism did a lot for me personally, we moved down to Oxfordshire and into Michael Hesteltine's constituency a year after she came to power, entering a bunker of safety from her pernicious policies.

Although died in the wool liberals, my parents took advantage of the privatisation of the nation's assets by buying and profiting from BT, Gas and other privatisations. This provided the financial stability that they enjoy today and one day, I assume, I'll inherit.

In 1979 Oxford United were somewhere between going nowhere and going under. Robert Maxwell and Jim Smith changed all that, of course. But I question whether we could have done it without Thatcherism.

Thatcher saw football as part of the 'enemy within'. It was rife with social disorder, which had been allowed to fester as police forces were stretched in the 1970s and hooliganism was largely written off as naughty boys letting off steam.

But, Thatcher couldn't stop football, unlike the unionised insurgents - miners and print workers - the fans were too disparate and unorganised. She had a good go, though, with her attempt to introduce membership cards. Only the disasters at Bradford and Hillsborough sobered everyone up.

She did, however, succeed in ghettoising the game. Football was the country's badlands; and although she never toppled it as the country's national sport, it was strangled to the point that many of its former giants were either crippled or severely handicapped. Football poverty became a central issue. Charlton were early victims, and Middlesborough, others limped along. It had the effect of levelling the playing field and giving the likes of Oxford, Wimbledon and Luton the opportunity to thrive.

Football wasn't cool, and nobody had the foresight to see its potential in making money or galvanising communities. Robert Maxwell did, however, in the book Rags to Riches he bemoans, with a high degree of prescience the fact that football didn't 'get' TV.  The cororally being that if it did, then it would make lots of money. Which it did, of course.

Maxwell wasn't a Thatcherite politically, but he was philosophically; he was belligerently individualistic and happy to crush those weaker than him. He thrived in the 80s business environment. Furthermore, he wasnt concerned about cowtowing to Thatcher and was happy to invest in football.

So, we were a beneficiary of Thatherite policies, but in the same way, we were victims. The failure to address the problem of hooliganism eventually lead to British clubs being banned from European football in 1985, preventing our own European campaign after the Milk Cup win in '86.

Football's position as a backwater meant that its growth as an industry was stymied. Gaining planning permission for football grounds was almost impossible, it was just a way of attracting violence into a neighbourhood. As a result, we were stuck at the Manor, which was woefully inadequate for our purposes in the mid-80s. And the Draconian approach to crowd control meant that the ground was festooned with cages.

Which brings us to her single biggest legacy. As part of these 'ground improvements' an iron fence was constructed down the middle of the London Road. Its aim was to obstruct the movement of fans within the stand, thereby reducing the opportunity to cause mass trouble. Oxford fans adopted a call and response chant proclaiming their allegiance to the left or right side of the fence. That song is still sung today, over 20 years later. As each year passes, the origins of the song will fade, even though it will continue to be sung loud and proud. It is, in essence, a slave song from the fans reclaiming its own terrace from the authorities who had defiled it with its cages and steel bars. If Thatcher left one thing with Oxford United; that was it.