Oxford Win the Treble

In claiming the Europa League Cup, FA Cup, and League Cup also; I’ve proudly claimed the treble with Oxford United, managing to achieve what I’ll probably never be able to again. Playing Blackburn of the Championship in the FA Cup Final was a bit of a gimme, and beating Chelsea in the Europa League final should have been harder than it was, but although my players didn’t really do a lot in the game; we did manage to score a goal, and that was more than Chelsea ever looked like doing. Winning the League Cup was probably actually the hardest of the three, and that took a tense penalty shoot-out to achieve.

I’m pleased that we won the treble, but I do feel that we did so at the expense of a place in the Champions League next season. 5th place we finished, 3 points behind Tottenham, and 2 ahead of both Stoke and Portsmouth. Portsmouth thumped us 4-2 towards the end of the campaign, and I can’t help but think that if we hadn’t played so many cup games towards the end of the season then maybe we would have won more than 2 of our last 10 league games. Key players had to be rested for league games to be available for cup games, and if we hadn’t done so well in all of the cups then we’d have had more of a team to choose from.

My Oxford team has lacked strength in depth ever since arriving in the Premier League, and although we can beat most teams when all players are available; when important players are missing we tend to falter, and our cover is in most cases inadequate. We need a few more quality players in the squad to increase our options I feel, and in the transfer window I’ll be looking to bring a few new Premier League faces to the squad with the view to finish in the top four next season, hopefully combined with a quality cup run also.