IS OXFORD'S NUMBER UP?

At last, it is near enough to the weekend for me to start on the FA Cup Third Round "blog", one of the most exciting weekends of the footballing year.

Oxford United take on Swansea, with 40 year old, well travelled, Michael Appleton, leading his "modernised" club into the battle. Having been in charge at Oxford for 18 months, he is a manager who spends a lot of time on detail. With many ideas to improve footballers and clubs, he spent his best playing period at West Bromwich where he developed a fine reputation as coach and indeed was care-taker manager for 6 days, until Roy Hodgson was appointed. Appleton wanted a challenge, so he went to Portsmouth (almost a year), Blackpool (65 days) and then Blackburn (67 days); three jobs in less than a year and a half, which ruined his reputation. Each club let him down in one way or another, You should know what I mean.

Oxford gave him a chance to get re-established, in the summer of 2014 and he is applying his ideas to a club that has an eye on the future.

Oxford has a full time analyst, not many League Two clubs can boast that. There is a Head of Logistics, a psychiatrist and Appleton has taken a pay cut to fund his extra back room staff. These "tools" he knows are vital for progress.

The home changing room is set up for defenders to change together and attackers also; I know of some managers who made the away dressing room as unfriendly as possible. "L" shaped, small, narrow, lacking in good facilities, flat warm up balls. As if!?

For £200,000 he had the Kassam Stadium pitch narrowed to suit the demands of his players, paying the wembley turf specialists to carry out the contract.

He breaks the league season down into units of five matches, in which a set of matches is given a target number to achieve of every statistic in football...shots on goal, crosses conceded; "starting with the end in mind". Apparently, every 50-50 challenge players win in a game correlates with the number of points the team will win in the promotion race.

The Cup tie comes as Oxford sit third in League Two. Swansea are in the Premier doldrums. It could be interesting.

BTW, Ron Atkinson holds the club record for most number of team appearances (560) and if you glance at the website, there have been some very famous players passing through the club's doors. Ron's brother Graham holds the club's scoring record 107.