25/10/07 - No Further Forward

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the trust.

At present this 'weekly' article seems to have become fortnightly. My motivation to write or talk about OUFC is at an all time low so perhaps I should be grateful I've typed anything at all. The rottenness of OUFC rolls on and on. It seems bizarre that 18ish months ago we thought Smith and Merry could turn it round immediately. I was happy to accept the devastation of relegation from the League as I had led myself to believe that promotion would be a formality as our resources, managerial experience and contacts would allow us to pull together a squad which would be able to take promotion. Instead we were beaten to it by clubs with half of our wage budget.

However, I was happy to accept another season of Conference football because, after all, we only missed out on a Wembley Final by the width of a post, and surely there was no way we could mess it up again. Experience had been gained from a so-nearly successful season, players would be battle-hardened and ready to win the fight first and the football match second. How utterly wrong I was.

On the positive side, we had a one nil win at Farsley! Yeah, brilliant. That would have been a good result had we followed it up with three points in the very winnable game against an average Woking side. Unfortunately we didn’t so it wasn’t. In fact, Woking should have beaten us. I've heard arguments that it was a good game and we played good football. I must have been at a very different game to the people who saw that. Our defence was all over the place (as usual), the midfield was fairly anonymous (as usual), and there was pretty much no attacking endeavour (you get the point). Make no bones about it, we are in trouble. If we cant consistently beat the average or the poor teams in this division then we will start to slip down the table. We aren't quite relegation fodder yet but 6 points from our last 5 games (3 of them at home) is not promotion form particularly when we are already 7 points from the play-offs and 14 points from top spot.

The on-the-pitch problems obviously lie with the players. However, the management must take ultimate responsibility for these players. The management brought these players into the club, train with them all week, and put them out on a match-day with a 'tactical' plan. It's not working, any of it. Why can't Smith/Merry/various other ostriches see that?! If Smith can sort it out then I see no reason for him to leave but at the moment he seemingly doesn’t have a clue about what is going on. Perhaps for a start Smith could come out in a post match interview and:

• admit 'we' (including himself and the management with the players) played poorly
• admit things need to improve
• admit recent results have been unacceptable for a club which should be pushing for promotion
• leave the individual, childish criticism for the training ground or perhaps leave it out all together
• stop blaming other teams for having the audacity to 'up their game' (is this even true or are we just rubbish?)
• suggest that he might try something new in training. Something that might create a goal-scoring chance or two.

The fact is that there are no definite answers about what we do. Hence all the ranting and frustration. Do we change manager again or allow him more time? My feeling, as each game passes, is that Smith must go. Not simply because we are playing poorly but for the fact he has not got a clue what to do about it.

Jim Smith will always be a great figure at this club for what he has done in the past but it seems that his time as a manager is just that; past. He can still be part of the future of OUFC but he needs to realise that at the moment managing good results on the pitch is beyond him.

Still, at least we're playing away in Europe this weekend. Passports out lads. Wouldn't miss it for the world……………..