They didn’t sing the words, but after a humiliating 5-0 defeat by Bolton Wanderers in March, most Oxford United fans expected Des Buckingham to be sacked in the morning. Oxford had been third in League One when Buckingham took charge four months earlier; now they were eighth and plummeting out of the promotion picture.
“We went to Bolton and, probably naively on my part, we chose to change our shape and press and be aggressive away from home, and it didn’t work,” Buckingham says. “That was on me.”
