Oxford United v Barnsley Match Thoughts

[SBRed48]

My biggest disappointment SB, was that we never got to see what Val's plans were, for the season straight after the Play off defeat.
Was he just a one trick manager who had been found out by then ?, as some have suggested, well we'll never know that.
I don't think he was into the so called sh*ithousery tactics though, as bad as Gareth Ainsworth & Wycombe are for example.

Ismael was off like a shot taking the club captain and coaching staff with him. Hoofball didn't go down well at WBA with fans and players and he had no Plan B, bringing the inevitable sacking.

I respect your right to have the opinion that Ismael did not employ sh1thousery and time wasting/ spoiling tactics.

[Shadrack the Red]

Ismael was off like a shot taking the club captain and coaching staff with him. Hoofball didn't go down well at WBA with fans and players and he had no Plan B, bringing the inevitable sacking.

I respect your right to have the opinion that Ismael did not employ sh1thousery and time wasting/ spoiling tactics.

The West Brom fans might have been disappointed with the quality of football under Val but I put that down to arrogance , they still believed they were a premier league club & therefore should play like one but the sacking turned out to be a shocking error of judgement , they sacked him when they were 5th in the table & had just lost their first home game of the season at a time when they had just signed Dike with the run in not far away , well that went well didn"t it, after Val left their season went south big time & in the end could easily have got sucked into a relegation battle , I strongly believe that if they had stuck with Val they would certainly have made the play offs, he made it with our squad & West Brom had a lot better squad & were already in the mix , of course no one can say for definite what would have happened , it is just my opinion but it was definitely proven that they ended up in a lot worse position in the league that when they got rid of him , that cannot be argued with , the table doesn"t lie

[SBRed48]

WBA's form had nosedived in the weeks leading up to Ismael's sacking, losing four in a row before he departed. His tenure followed the same pattern of initial success, then being rumbled. He had lost the dressing room and his own fans were chanting "sacked in the morning". Dike was injured soon after he arrived. The slide down the table had been set in motion and continued.
In October last year Ismael was sacked by Besiktas after a poor run of results and has not been employed since.

[Shadrack the Red]

WBA's form had nosedived in the weeks leading up to Ismael's sacking, losing four in a row before he departed. His tenure followed the same pattern of initial success, then being rumbled. He had lost the dressing room and his own fans were chanting "sacked in the morning". Dike was injured soon after he arrived. The slide down the table had been set in motion and continued.
In October last year Ismael was sacked by Besiktas after a poor run of results and has not been employed since.

Sorry SB we disagree on this one, West Brom were definitely 5th in the league & had just lost their first home match of the season when Val departed , you are right about Dike getting injured which was very unlucky for the club,, but a club lying 5th in the league in my opinion have hardly lost the dressing room . I cannot comment about his time at Besiktas as I never follow European leagues but no doubt what you say will be right, but I know you have a dislike for Val but achieving 5 th spot with both us & West Brom when he left both clubs signifies to me that he was a success at both teams . I also do not understand why if he had lost the dressing room then why did things not improve after he left ? , what actually happened was that after he left the team went down the league , on the 29th of jan they were 5th & Val was sacked on the 2nd of feb.

[SBRed48]

Yes it's all very odd.

I do not dispute they were 5th but clearly summat wo not reyt darn at the Hawthorns, otherwise why were the crowd chanting for his sacking and the owners agreeing with their request ? Strange.

Just for clarification I do not dislike Ismael as a person but for the things he did, mainly--

1 Cheating on other football clubs, fans and players whilst at Linz, Austria, breaking Covid Austrian FA Rules. It was serious enough to warrant LASK Linz being docked points and him being sacked. I was against his appointment for that reason--I suppose it's called having a moral compass.

2 Bringing in awful football, with a hoofball and" 'Ave it" style, sh1ihousery, time wasting and spoiling anti football tactics ( apart from the second half at Bournemouth). I suppose it's called paying money to be entertained football wise rather than a win is all that matters attitude.
I'm just an old school purist who thought you could both be entertained and win as in the early 80's, 1997 and 2016.

[EthelRed]

Yes it's all very odd.

I do not dispute they were 5th but clearly summat wo not reyt darn at the Hawthorns, otherwise why were the crowd chanting for his sacking and the owners agreeing with their request ? Strange.

Just for clarification I do not dislike Ismael as a person but for the things he did, mainly--

1 Cheating on other football clubs, fans and players whilst at Linz, Austria, breaking Covid Austrian FA Rules. It was serious enough to warrant LASK Linz being docked points and him being sacked. I was against his appointment for that reason--I suppose it's called having a moral compass.

2 Bringing in awful football, with a hoofball and" 'Ave it" style, sh1ihousery, time wasting and spoiling anti football tactics ( apart from the second half at Bournemouth). I suppose it's called paying money to be entertained football wise rather than a win is all that matters attitude.
I'm just an old school purist who thought you could both be entertained and win as in the early 80's, 1997 and 2016.

Ditto!

[animallittle3]

Val took us to a place we hadn't seen for twenty years and a place we aren't likely to visit again , at least not in my lifetime .

Val made me dream again , another shot at the Big time when that particular dream had gone forever and championship survival was and still is the only show in town .

I could hardly believe we'd turned the game around at Bournemouth that March afternoon , the two bob merchants from up North playing a massively expensive team off the park , Dominic Solanke cost them £21m alone .

I was absolutely delirious with joy , what a performance and what a result .

That Play Off campaign as I say had me dreaming again and this is what this game should be all about , they've all but knocked those dreams out of fans of clubs like ourselves with the way football is now but Val gave us another shot .

If we'd tried to play purist football we would probably had top weight on staying up .

All I know is that for three months in 2021 we put the absolute shytes up the championship who didn't know what hit them and we couldn't stop winning , winning the type of games we hadn't won for twenty years .

Was it sustainable to play that way indefinitely ?

Absolutely not .

But it worked for a period and trust me nobody wanted us in the play offs , I read all the forums just before the season ended , the Brentford fans were shytin bricks and the Bournemouth fans didn't fancy it either .

As it happened we dropped for possibly the only team in the play offs who were equipped to deal with us and they did .

But it was one hell of a ride and we won't be seeing it again .

[pass_and_move]

Looking back I think it was easy to get carried away because we were winning. Winning is a great feeling, especially when you're not used to doing it in the championship regularly. However, what did it for me was the away form. We were going to grounds and just smashing teams up by being aggressive(yet disciplined) and in their faces proper playing on the front foot but also being organised at the back.

Having travelled all over watching Tarn ova years, away wins were always like gold dust. Barring 96/97 and 99/00, tha normally went hoping we'd snatch summat. Under Ismael we wo fancying it wherever we went. Just a shame supporters weren't allowed to witness it cos o covid.

We amassed 11 championship away wins out of 19 games under Val. That is unlikely to be repeated in a long long time. Even Wilsons wonders of 96/97 couldn't match that record.

[Acido]

Well he/Val gave us a damn sight more than just a good 2nd half away at Bournemouth, that's for sure.
As some others have said, winning is a good mentality to have and it felt like we could beat anybody. I especially liked the fact that just for once, we made other teams sit up and take notice of us, none of them liked playing against us.
And as it was at the depressing time of the lockdown, it felt good again to see us mixing it with the best teams in the Championship. We came within an inch of a Wembley Play off Final, so its a time that I'll always look back at fondly.

[Young_Nudger]

Ismael dropped on a club at Barnsley that had players specifically recruited to play in a certain way - a quick passing game.
That style wasn’t far away from Ismaels theory about football.
All what Ismael had to do was tweak it - and it worked.
Unfortunately it was weak in one area - the middle 2 in midfield.

Ismeal’s theory couldn’t be applied at WBA because they didn’t have those types of players.
So he failed.

Conway changed the style of play the following season.
Which we all know was a disaster.

But the recruitment is back on track - moving again in the blitzkrieg direction.
I didn’t see the Portsmouth game cos I’m away - but the comments I read about Cotter were very interesting.