Following replacement knee surgery on Wednesday, I was forced into missing my first Bristol City League fixture for a few years. Not since fans weren’t allowed to attend games during the COVID-19 restrictions had I missed being in amongst the away fans. What made this even worse, was the fact that I have not been to Oxford United’s Kassam Stadium and so that one still hasn’t been ticked off.
I expected there to be changes to the matchday squad, what with Kal Naismith departing for Luton Town and Fally Mayulu joining Sturm Graz, albeit Fally wasn’t in the squad to face Blackburn Rovers, but I didn’t expect five changes. After Joe Williams’ substitute appearance and assist last time out, I thought he might come in, but I didn’t expect to see George Earthy start and was surprised at Anis Mehmeti being named on the bench.
I’m not a good watcher of football on TV, you miss so much of what happens off the ball and the atmosphere at the ground also plays a huge part in my experience, however I was at least thankful at being able to see the game. As the teams took to the field, I got to see who the referee was… Oliver Langford!
I have watched enough EFL games to form an opinion on Mr Langford and he is never a referee who impresses me. The experienced match official unfortunately ended up having too much influence on the game and I think both managers, Liam Manning and Gary Rowett, came out and said that they felt Langford had a poor afternoon.
The stall had very much been set out by the man in charge as early as the third minute when he booked Ross McCrorie for a challenge when he appeared to have pulled out of a 50/50 ball. It was the inconsistency from the man in the middle that led to most of the frustration. In the 18th minute, Oxford left-back Gregory Leigh caught Williams high up on the thigh and when slowed down, I think if VAR was in the Championship that yellow would have been changed to a red. It wasn’t a red card challenge, and the yellow was the right call.
There wasn’t too much to comment on in the opening half an hour as both sides struggled to find their rhythm and passing range. I was indebted to the pain in my knee keeping me awake while sat in front of the TV. We struggled to get anything creative going with the likes of Scott Twine, Earthy and Mark Sykes having no impact on the game.
The big talking point came on the half an hour mark when Williams jumped into a challenge with Will Vaulks. There is clearly no love lost between the two and whilst it could be argued that Joe’s challenge was reckless, it wasn’t high, wasn’t dangerous and he actually won the ball with only his trailing leg catching Vaulks. The midfielder wasn’t hurt and immediately jumped up and along with most of his teammates was straight into Langford’s ear imploring a red card. Joe was dragged away smirking and I’m not sure his reaction did him any favours.
The Sky commentator Sam Parkin felt with the time between producing a card that it would be yellow whereas I felt, and with how Langford sees the game, that it would be red and that’s what he produced. It was probably somewhere in between. If you slowed down both the Leigh challenge on Williams and the Williams challenge on Vaulks, the Leigh one could be seen as worse. I felt Langford was overly influenced by the United players and wrongly produced the red card. I was just so disappointed with Joe, he did so well last time out and then made a stupid, needless challenge that forced Langford into making a big call.
We were all at sea for a period after the sending-off, Zak Vyner made a poor challenge, and Max O’Leary came to punch a cross that was never there to be punched. Twine almost produced something but chose to fall to the ground rather than stay on his feet. This is another case of copy and paste from previous columns, stop looking for cheap free kicks Scott.
Manning changed his team at half-time and withdrew Nahki Wells and Twine, replacing them with Sinclair Armstrong and Max Bird which was brave and turned out to be a good call. We conceded a poor goal down to a lack of communication between Rob Dickie and O’Leary. Rob, who had another off day, should have dealt with the cross-come-shot from Leigh and instead left it, leaving Max flat-footed.
Thankfully within minutes, we were level and it was a wonderfully inventive free kick. Credit to Pat Mountain and the work done on the training ground. Armstrong, who was putting in a shift up front on his own, won a free kick which Earthy dummied taking. When Bird played it across, Jason Knight made another dummy run and the ball was passed across the edge of the box for Sykes to rifle a first time curling shot into the net. It was a brilliant goal.
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We were comfortable playing with ten men but there was more drama to come in the 86th minute when having been booked early, McCrorie saw red for a challenge on Brown. Ross had won the initial ball but then lost control and you could see it coming as almost in slow-motion he tried to win the second ball and was a fraction late. He didn’t even wait to see Langford brandishing the card. It was one of those challenges that as fans you can’t understand why it was made, it seemed so stupid but it’s almost an instinctive reaction.
I feared a last kick in the teeth, but we managed the game out well and I think deservedly got something out of it. I’m not quite sure how I felt at the end. Clearly, a point in the circumstances was good but had we finished 1-1 with 11 men, I wouldn’t have felt the same. What it did show was a tremendous team spirit and togetherness and I know from fans who were at the game, the atmosphere and appreciation of the players efforts was great.
Our 3 Peaps In A PodCast player ratings were: Max O’Leary 6, Zak Vyner 5.5, Luke McNally 7 *MotM, Rob Dickie 5.5, Ross McCrorie 5, Mark Sykes 7, Jason Knight 6, Joe Williams 4, Scott Twine 4.5, George Earthy 5.5, and Nahki Wells 5.5.
For the substitutes who must play a minimum of 20 minutes (including injury time), we went Sinclair Armstrong 6.5 and Max Bird 6. A game average player rating of 5.69. That’s an overall season-to-date average player rating of 5.93.
For Liam Manning it was 6.5, it was a hard-earned battling point and a deserved point.