The following season all seemed to be running smoothly. Taylor Woodrow commenced buliding work on the new ground at Minchery Farm. Our team was riding high in the first division, despite the traditional terrible away form. The programme advertised our final home match of the season as "Last Match at the Manor". The first sign that things were truly amiss was when the Oxford Mail ran a story saying that Taylor Woodrow were to stop building work as the money required had not been guaranteed. The club angrily denied this story, and announced that the builders were merely on holiday. The building work had stopped in January - it began to look like the builders were taking a long holiday. At much the same time, our star player, Matt Elliott, was sold to Leicester for a paltry sum with what seemed indecent haste. The club assured us all the money would go towards signing new players. We saw none of it. The team slid down the division. Rumours (encouraged by the club) abounded that we were to be bought by Juventus/Benetton/the mafia/anyone with an Italian sounding name. Nothing happened though. The programme eventually conceded that the Barnsley match would not be the last at the Manor. We were in trouble...
In 1997/98 though, the proverbial shit really hit the fan. Our "true fan" chairman, Robin Herd, holder of around 90% of the shares, upped and left without much explanation. It seemed he wasn't quite as well off as many of us had hoped. MD Keith Cox became acting chairman. There was still no work on the new ground, with the shells of two stands originally looking an impressive start, but quickly becoming an embarrassment and eyesore. In late November Oxford officially announced that they were in financial trouble and could not afford the wages of non-playing staff. The entire squad was put up for sale. For the home match against QPR (live on SKY) in early December, a protest orchestrated by the fanzine, Rage On, saw the fans holding up yellow cards with SOS ("Save Oxford Soccer") emblazoned on them. Collections were taken to help towards the wages of club staff.
We seemed to ride the storm. Three star players were sold, our manager upped and left for West Brom, but under the inspirational leadership of our new manager, Malcolm Shotton, and with a large number of youngsters hastily blooded in the first team, we climbed the table. In the close season we even seemed to have enough money to fund a 475,000 pound deal for Dean Windass from Aberdeen. Where did we get this money from? Was there a deal for the club in the offing?
This season it slowly emerged that a consortium, Grenoble Investments Ltd., was interested in buying the club, despite debts approaching 15 million. Who were this mysterious Bahamas-based (tax haven alert!) company? Work was to start on the new ground in November - a highly necessary development, as if the club remain in division one for next season, it will have to be in an all-seater stadium. Not enough seats at the Manor really...
There were however worrying rumours from Aberdeen as to exactly how much of Windass' transfer money had been paid. The leader (or spokesperson) of the consortium was one John Gunn. At the end of October he suddenly pulled out of the deal to buy Oxford. Without his backing it seemed Oxford were once more close to bankruptcy...
At this point, I decided to start this website. The news
pages take up the story in some detail. So read on....