By Nathan Jackson
February 6 2005

In responce to the question set by our preview to the Oxford game, yes, the game was as one sided as last time. Oxford were terrible as City forced 17 shots and 15 corners compared to 3 of each from Oxford who were truly awful. By the way, did I mention Oxford were really bad?

Right, before we start, I would just like to show you the stats for this game to show that we did indeed dominated the game

Possession:
Lincoln City 65% Oxford Utd 35%
Shots:
Lincoln City 17 Oxford Utd 3
Corners:
Lincoln City 15 Oxford Utd 3
Fouls:
Lincoln City 15 Oxford Utd 18
Bookings:
Lincoln City 0 Oxford Utd 4

Now, I'm going to make no bones about it, we've played every team in this division, some one, some twice and Oxford are the latter and are by far the worst team we've played, they are just bloody awful and how we only scored 4 (legal) goals in the 2 games is beyond me as we should have easily been into double figures.. In the 2 games we've had against them this season, we reached 30+ corners. They can claim they're a big club all they want and they play nice flowing, passing football but that's a load of bollocks and Oxford's performance could be summed up in 1 word, HOOF.

Anywho, now for the match report.

Craig Davies produced the first effort but his volley went straight at Marriott. City counter attacked quickly befre Jon Ashton fouled Simon Yeo. City got a free kick but Sandwith's shot was easily saved by Christ Tardiff. City won a 6th minute corner but Roget cleared Toner's delivery with ease and Oxford broke and forced City to coneed a corner. Bradbury's inswinger was about to be headed in by Ashton but Marriott got there first.

GTF had the next oppurtunity of the game when he ran on to Francis Green's flick on, the resulting play gave City a corner, which was deflected behind for another one, this continued and City gained 6 consecutive corners before the final time McAuley was adjudged to have pushed Tardiff over even though it seemed a lot like Roget was infact the player who caused the keeper to flap around like Nemo would outside of water.

Green broke one on one with Tardiff in the 17th minute but his weak shot was straight at Tardiff. The game broke down for a while but then around the 30th minute, it all started in the 27th minute when Davies was booked for fouling Green. Mackey was then the centre of attention when he was adjudged to have brought down Yeo inside the area. Yeo himself took the penalty and smashed it in for his 5th goal in 3 games. Oddly enough when Oxford were trying to kick off, City kept moving players into the centre circle, Oxford tried 3 times but each time, players came into the area and Oxford player Tommy Mooney, who hadn't been trying to make friends with City fans, was booked for time wasting.

The game slowed down and nothing happened again until in the 2nd half other than a few half chances for CIty. After 10 minutes of the second half, Butcher and GTF played some neat interplay before GTF ran around a few Oxford players before sending a beautiful curling shot past Tardiff to make it 2-0 to City.

Oxford then briefly woke up when Davies sent a shot miles over the bar.  City were no playing with confidence that everyone has seen since the game at Grimsby. The second half was very empty of action other than the odd chance that wouldn't even be considered half chances. Butcher forced an impressive save 6 minutes from time after good work from Peter Gain who was brought on and the team reverted to the 4-3-3 formation that changed last week's game at Mansfield and it payed off in injury time. Work from Gainy down the left saw him dink the ball over Tardiff and Yeo was there waiting to score the easiest of the 6 goals in the last two games.