How Oxford won promotion and what's next under Buckingham

“To stand on the Wembley steps with the trophy, overlooking 35,000 of our fans, that is something that will stay with me for life,” Des Buckingham tells Sky Sports. The boy from Oxford had taken his team into the Championship.

For the first time in a generation, Oxford United are back in the second tier. Memories of beating Bolton on that sunny day in May have lingered this summer. It was not just the game itself, but the subsequent open-top bus parade on their return to the city.

“I grew up in Oxford for 29 years. I have never seen it the way I saw it that evening. The amount of people. I did not know what to expect, but I certainly did not expect that. As corny as it may sound, it really showed how big the club is to the people.”

There was the trip to his former primary school too. “We surprised the kids,” he recalls with genuine pride. “We walked in the assembly hall and took the trophy in. It was a real nice kind of full-circle moment going back there and seeing them. That was emotional.”

When Buckingham talks this way about Oxford, it feels like an obvious fit. He still has the ticket from his first game as a supporter in 1990 and was at Wembley as a fan when Oxford won promotion back to the Football League in 2010. He is one of them.

But Buckingham is also the prodigal son. He had been part of Chris Wilder’s staff at his hometown club but then departed for a career that would develop in New Zealand and blossom in India, coaching within the pioneering City Football Group system.

His appointment to replace Liam Manning when his predecessor left for Bristol City in November required some imagination. After all, Buckingham had never managed in his home country. “I have no doubt people were probably asking, ‘Who is this guy?'”

The challenge was complicated by the fact that Manning had Oxford towards the top of League One. How do you begin to implement your own ideas when any attempts at change might be viewed as needless? He compared his position to that of a stepfather.

“There was a bit of shock around the place. It was a transition period and I did not bring any staff with me, I arrived alone. I was trying to build relationships with 30 players and staff, trying not to get rid of the good work that Liam had clearly done with the team.”

He describes his own ideas as “very different” – but introducing them mid-season was not straightforward. “You are trying to change the brand of football. That takes some time.” The turning point? “It took us getting hit for five at Bolton, funnily enough.”

That 5-0 defeat to the team they would go on to beat at Wembley left Oxford outside of the play-off places, all momentum seemingly lost. “A horrible result.” But it proved to be the catalyst for change. They were the top scorers in League One thereafter.

“It was almost a point where you said, ‘right, that’s enough’. You try to give it its time, but it is now time to just say, this is what we are doing and get on with it. It seemed to be that trigger point afterwards where we were able to build the way we wanted to play.

“We changed the formation, we changed the way we set up, we changed the personnel and pretty much set the team up as if it was the start of pre-season. It is what I would have done. Could I have done it sooner? Should I have done it sooner? Possibly.”

A more ambitious approach brought four-goal wins over Fleetwood and Burton before a 5-0 victory over Peterborough – all inside a fortnight. EFL experts Ali Maxwell and George Elek referred to his ‘reverse-mullet’ system – business at the back, party up front.

“I won’t say I like it, but I understand where they are coming from,” laughs Buckingham. “We were winning games by one goal. The way I wanted us to play was to be far more aggressive out of possession. And, with the ball, I wanted us to be a bit more expansive.

“Liam had the team set up really well, especially defensively. It was really compact, 4-4-2, deep block, and we would then break and transition very quickly, but generally from lower areas of the pitch. I wanted us to be a far more aggressive team.

I wanted us to be a team that presses as much as possible and tries to stop opposition getting into their stride and building up their own game plan. So it was a big shift. It was more about letting our creative players really showcase what they could do.”

Buckingham’s thinking is a product of his background. A title winner with Mumbai City, working as part of the City Football Group has helped shape clear ideas about the way he wants his team to play. “I am not a coach who just tries not to lose games.”

The question now is whether that attitude will work for Oxford in the Championship, where there are many clubs with better resources. That became clear when he saw the fixture list this summer. “Everywhere you look there are former Premier League clubs.”

The departure of Josh Murphy, player of the match at Wembley, underlines the task. He has left for newly-promoted Portsmouth. Can Oxford really take the game to teams at this level? “We will have to adapt, but we will not bend too far,” says Buckingham.

“I am not naive enough to think that we can go into the Championship and dictate and dominate too many of those games. I am aware of that. We will have to be smart about how we set up tactically, similar to what we did at Wembley against Bolton.

“I want us to play football that will allow us to get results, of course, but I also want us to play football where people can look at that and say, I can see exactly what you are trying to do. And if we lose then we lose playing the way that we want to play.”

But with a new stadium being lined up and an ownership group that views the club as upwardly mobile, these are exciting times for Oxford. It is the reason why Buckingham is back home. “That was the attraction behind leaving CFG, their vision,” he explains.

“Their ambition was not just to become a Championship club but to become a top-30 club and then sustain that status as a top-30 club. We have probably arrived in the Championship a bit sooner than we thought, if I am being very honest.

“But they are very keen for us to now establish ourselves and stay in the league, very progressive and very clear on how we want to do that. And since I have been here, everything that has been said to me is what is actually happening.”

The next step will be difficult but that work has long since begun. Buckingham has only had a handful of days off all summer, promotion having propelled them into a new world, opening up fresh recruitment opportunities but changing the picture ahead.

A reunion with Wilder has caught his eye on the calendar. “That will be a nice moment.” But first up it is Norwich at home on the opening weekend, the club’s first second-tier fixture in 26 years, a journey that has taken them out of the Football League and back.

How will that feel? “If it can feel anything like it felt on the final home game of the season, there was a real sense of coming together, the fanbase, the playing group and the staff,” says Buckingham. “There is a real buzz around Oxford at the moment.”

He adds: “People are quite happy to stop you and talk about the club and their experience of Wembley, taking the kids or the grandkids. Now it is about making sure that buzz continues and we make people proud when they come to support this team.”

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