It's
amazing the difference a last-minute winner can make. I had been
preparing to lay into the Oxford United team after another lacklustre
home performance and then up pops none other than Michael Raynes with
a goal deep into stoppage time to gift us with three undeserved
points. As it happens, I still wasn't mightily impressed with what I
saw tonight, but I would happily take that kind of performance in
every game from now until the end of the season if the result is the
same.
If
you had asked me 20 minutes into the match, I would have had little
doubt that Oxford would win the game comfortably. The yellows started
excellently; looking dangerous going forward, chasing down every
second ball and rarely allowing Barnet to get out of their own half.
But for all that good play, we created very few clear-cut chances. A
well-struck Damian Batt volley which went narrowly wide of the post
was about as close as Oxford came in the first half, though James
Constable should have done better when Barnet goalkeeper Graham Stack
fumbled a corner, blazing over from just a few yards out.
The
best chance of the half actually fell Barnet's way in what was their
only meaningful attack of the first 45 minutes. A lovely through ball
cut open United's defence and when Luke Gambin played the ball across
the goalmouth from the byline Dani Lopez – Barnet's hat-trick hero
on Saturday – somehow managed to miss it completely when the
lightest of touches was all it needed to guide the ball into
McCormick's gaping net.
After
that Oxford's great start began to fizzle out and we allowed Barnet
back into the match. If the Bees had been a better side, or perhaps
just a more ambitious one, they could quite easily have imposed
themselves on this Oxford team and taken the game by the scruff of
the neck. As it happened, neither side looked confident enough to try
and win the game and both seemed content to demonstrate to the other
that they are a 'passing side' by playing the ball harmlessly across the
respective back fours for most of the half.
The
closest Oxford came to creating any dangerous situations was from
dead-ball situations and we had several opportunities to craft a
chance from corners and well-situated free-kicks. These were
invariably wasted, to the increasing frustration of the crowd. But an impressively long throw-in from Scott Davies led to our
final real chance of the first half and Constable managed to get a
good shot away before seeing it blocked by Dave Stephens as it
appeared to be rocketing towards the top corner.
The
second half followed a similar pattern to the first. Oxford should
have taken the lead just moments after the restart when Constable
played Alfie Potter through, but he appeared to have lost his recent
goalscoring magic as he blasted the ball over when one-on-one with
the keeper.
Oxford
faded fast after this early highlight and the game descended into an
absolutely dire spectacle in freezing conditions with the home crowd
growing increasingly restless. Everything was just flat from United
with passes going astray, possession being surrendered cheaply and
with most of the players watching on desperately hoping that one of
their team-mates would step up and do something. We looked like a
side that was completely out of ideas and none of the players seemed
ready to accept responsibility and make something happen themselves.
Barnet, for their part, couldn't believe their luck that they would
be able to stroll to a draw without having to break a sweat – the
idea that they might actually win the game apparently hadn't crossed
their minds.
In
fairness to the visitors, they did create a few half-chances on the
rare occasions that they ventured forward and twice fired the ball
into the side netting – each time resulting in a lengthy stoppage
as ground staff tried to fix the net, which clearly hadn't been
attached properly. Another sad chapter in the unfunny farce that is
Oxford's tenure at Firoz Kassam's Stadium. And Barnet did actually
have the ball in the net towards the end of the match when Andy Yiadom fired in
from a corner, but the referee had already blown his whistle for hand
ball.
The
lengthy stoppages to fix the broken goal-net meant that the referee
needed to add five more minutes to play, but with the match seeming
destined to be a gloomy bore draw many Oxford fans decided that they
would rather head for the warm comfort of their cars. Those who
remained came alive to spur the side on for one final chance after Liam Davis was fouled out wide on the left. Personally, I suspected that just as
we had wasted so many other free-kicks and corners throughout the
match this one would be knocked deep and would be easily dealt with
once again by the Barnet defence. And indeed it was hit deep, except
that this time, instead of finding the head of a defender, the ball
found Tom Craddock at the back post. He nodded it back across the
face of goal and Michael Raynes popped up to nod it home in the fifth
minute of injury time, sparking scenes of pandemonium in a sparsely
populated East Stand.
Minutes
later the final whistle was met with rapturous cheers from the home
faithful. Had the referee chosen to blow his whistle just 90 seconds
earlier it would have been met with quite a different response. But
these are the narrow margins on which football matches – and
sometimes entire seasons – can turn. And with United closing the
gap on the play-offs to five points and having won four of our
previous five games, perhaps our luck has finally turned.
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