Everything lead me towards thinking that we'd lose today. Oxford yet to lose at home, we're without Hardie and Galloway, plus we're simply due a loss at some point. And then we have an awful first 10 minutes where Oxford go 1-0 up. I was fully expecting (like I've seen so many times before under previous managers) 80 minutes of huffing and puffing, not a lot of chance creation, perhaps a brief good period but ultimately a loss.
This team has got something quite incredible about them. Whilst minutes 45-55 were a little shaky, aside from that, we dominated them.
Tactically absolutely spot on from Lowe - the decision to pick Garrick over Agard was completely right. Oxford pushed their full backs very high, meaning that our wing backs could man-mark them. This gave Garrick and Jephcott so much space out wide to drag the centre backs out, isolate them for a 1-on-1 (like Garricks goal) or create space for others.
You know its been a good performance when the only real negatives are Cooper's kicking, which was unusually poor, and maybe Luke needs a bit more work on his heading.
This run has to stop at some point. And it's still fair to say that there's a good chance that we won't go up. But yesterday was THE day for me that makes me think we can challenge - not necessarily for automatics, but for top 6. What a season this could be.
Cooper 5, Wilson 8, Scarr 8, Gillesphey 6, Houghton 8, Edwards 6, Camara 9, Broom 6, Grant 8, Jephcott 7, Garrick 8... Mayor 8.