View Of The Opposition: Oxford

Thanks to Oxford fans Stephen and Harry for answering these questions.

How’s your season been so far?
S: Massively disappointing. Us Ox fans don’t expect much but this year has been a disaster.
H: Awful. Absolutely rubbish signings, an awful manager and a chairman who couldn’t care less about the club.


Oh right, we had a chairman like that as well last season. What’s he been up to then?
H: Well, he bought the club and initially saved us and kept us going for a few years. But in recent times he has done absolutely nothing to help the club out. He also built us a good stadium, but it only has 3 sides. He won’t build the fourth until the attendances rise.


What’s your current form like?
S: Very, very poor?. even worst than Swindon’s form.
H: The last 4 matches have been not too bad. 3 draws and one loss. At times we play well but we are underachieving too much, with the players we have we should be playing a lot better than we currently are doing.


Your getting dragged into a relegation battle – Do you think you will stay up?
S: 2 weeks ago I was confident we’d stay up – now I am not so sure. We cannot buy a win at the moment. If we get less than 4 points from Bury & Stockport away then we’ll do well to stay up. We have a very hard run in.
H: We have a good chance of staying up, but the fans have just got to keep behind the players until the end of season. We have brought in a motivator (Michael Finnigan) now who has worked with Premiership teams so hopefully he should help the players stay focused on the task of staying up.


Any key players we should look out for on Saturday?
S: We have 2 quality keepers who can always keep a clean sheet. If Basham gets a chance upfront, he is more than likely to put it away.. But he doesn’t get many chances.
H: Depends who plays, there is currently a lot of injuries. Chris Tardif (goalkeeper) plays a vital part. He recently won an award in the ‘FourFourTwo magazine’ named as Oxford United’s best player so far this season.


Any injured players that would normally feature that you will miss on Saturday?
S: No. But we sold Hackett for 20K to Hearts. If we had any ambition we’d have kept him and he’d provided a bit of width and pace. Kassam is slowly destroying us. He has got his land and cares nothing for Oxford United Football Club.
H: Only Eric Sabin, but he has been out for quite a while now.


Prediction for Saturday?
S: 2-0 to County…I’ll put money on it.
H: 2-1 to Oxford.