The week unwrapped
It’s all wrong, not that, but we’ll get to that.
Friday nights are for grinding your teeth and stopping the voices in your head from telling you we’ll win on Saturday. For the club, it was time to announce that Peter Kioso had signed for lower league minnows Peterborough. Apparently Posh owner Darragh McAnthony phoned PK ‘twenty days in a row’ which, for a man with his record, is kind of creepy.
Then, on Saturday morning, we announced Ben Davies’ on loan from Rangers in a teaser video so dark, it looked like he might trip over and injure himself, which is also known as standard Oxford United onboarding procedure.
Still, it all set us up nicely for an afternoon in the washing machine that is Birmingham City. The 1-0 defeat left us pointless, if not completely hopeless.
Seagullfacts
Brighton are football’s centrist dad; sensible, rational, socially liberal, economically centre-right. They drive an electric car – but not one of Elon’s – listen to 90s indie pop and still fancy Louise Werner from Sleeper.
This summer they’ve sensibly crapped only £70 million on players while receiving over £110m – £60m of which was from Chelsea for Joao Pedro. This makes them one of the least spendy clubs in the Premier League.
They finished 8th last season, which, because UEFA are thick, makes them the highest positioned team in the country not playing European Football and therefore the highest placed side in the EFL draw.
The season hasn’t started well, they drew with Fulham after conceding in the 97th minute and on Sunday, were guests for Everton’s first game at their new stadium. They hit the post twice and missed a penalty, but still let the Toffees win 2-0. They’re such polite boys.
Like most centrist dads they’re full of contradictions; they’ll no doubt share their dark side by ignoring the noble traditions of competition and fielding a weakened side. They need to keep their best players fresh so that they can be comprehensively beaten by Manchester City on Saturday.
Football friend: John Byrne
When Denis Smith succeeded Brian Horton as Oxford manager in September 1993 we were heading towards bankruptcy and relegation. A month later we were given an unexpected windfall when former striker Mark Stein was sold by Stoke to Chelsea. The sell-on clause allowed Smith to splash out on goalkeeper Phil Whitehead, defender, Matt Elliott and Irish international striker, John Byrne. It turned out to be quite a haul.
Byrne had been with Smith at York and featured in the Republic of Ireland squads for Euro 88 and the Italia 90. In 1986, he was a massive loser in the Milk Cup Final with QPR. In 1990 he joined Brighton before Smith took him to Sunderland a year later where he suffered another cup final defeat, losing to Liverpool in the FA Cup final in 1992.
Arriving at Oxford after a frustrating, injury hit spell at Millwall, Byrne was a silken chanteuse with soft feet and golden hair that cascaded down to his shoulders. He injected instant class into the side.
Three months later, Smith signed the less subtle super-grump, Paul Moody. The combination was dynamite; Byrne would thread passes and glide past players while Moody would biff the ball as hard as he could.
Byrne scored in the giant killing of Leeds in the FA Cup and ended the season as top goal scorer. It couldn’t prevent relegation but it set the side up for a major assault on immediate promotion back to the second tier.
Byrne was the master puppeteer, he scored a hat-trick on the opening day against Hull and unleashed Moody to score seven times in a six-game opening winning streak.
In the media saturated early days of the Premier League, patented goal celebrations became a thing. Byrne introduced ‘the raging bull’ putting his fingers to the side of his head and rubbing his foot along the floor. Oh, the glamour.
By Boxing Day, Oxford were three points clear with Moody and Byrne sharing 27 goals, Byrne scoring nine. Then, just before Christmas, Byrne was convicted for drink driving forcing him to live in Oxford and away from his family. The strain on his personal life proved too great, so when the opportunity came to move back home to Brighton, he took it. At the same time, Moody’s wife had given birth to twins who were ill in hospital. One of the greatest striking duos the club had ever seen was at an end and with it any hope of promotion.
Byrne left two years later to see out his final playing days in non-league football. He retired to become a podiatrist working around Sussex, fitting for a man with magic in his boots.
From the archive: Brighton 0 Oxford United 3 (1982)
In 1964, Oxford United famously beat Blackburn Rovers in the FA Cup fifth round, becoming the first Fourth Division club to reach the quarter-finals. For a period, Oxford were national news.
Despite the win, the club went into reverse. It took six years to beat another top-flight club; a 1-0 win over Wolves in the League Cup in 1970, but in the FA Cup, they failed to smote a single top flight side. They were more the slayed than the slayer, falling to Barking, Nuneaton Borough, Kettering Town, Chelmsford Town and Bedford Town.
In 1982 things were changing, Ian Greaves had arrested the slide and Robert Maxwell had saved the club from liquidation when Oxford drew First Division Brighton away in the Fourth Round.
Driven forward by 3,000 fans, Oxford swarmed over Brighton. Andy Thomas’ 20 yard drive stung keeper Graham Moseley hands before Mark Jones grazed the bar. After 19 minutes, Cassells pushed the ball past defender Steve Gatting, who tripped as the striker accelerated past him.
The former postman approached Moseley and struck it cleanly for 1-0. Five minutes later Moseley pushed the ball onto the post from Jones’ shot before Thomas released Cassells to test Moseley again.
Just before half-time, the inevitable happened; Billy Jeffrey’s cross found Foley to volley home for 2-0. Five minutes into the second half John Doyle’s found Foley to guide a looping header over Moseley for the third.
The win was one of the club’s greatest FA Cup giant killings. It was the biggest winning margin for a lower league club at a top-flight team for twenty years. Greaves called it “the greatest day in my career.” For Oxford, it was just the beginning.
Want more?
If you’re a true glutton for punishment, then sign up to the Oxblogger Newsletter, an eclectic bimonthly online fanzine written by the fans for the fans. The Pre-season issue is out now featuring your pre-season predictions, what happens when you fall out of, and back in love with Oxford United, an appraisal of The Soccer Tribe, the defence of non-scoring defenders and the surge of kit reveals.
Plus, the latest Oxblogger Podcast which originally planned to cover the panoply of owners that we’ve had over the decades, but eventually just talked about our current ones. Still, there’s a very good quiz about historical Brians.
And, if you’ve really got this far and aren’t aware, this season marks the 40th anniversary of Oxford United’s first season in the top flight, The Glory Years is out now the remarkable in-depth story of our rise through the divisions during the 1980s.