By Jerome Sale, BBC Radio Oxford’s Oxford United commentator
What Gary Rowett is, is a Championship manager.
He has hundreds of games behind him in the second tier and he joins a club that has, in the last quarter of a century, been in just 20 matches at that level.
If the owners, executives, and most of the players don’t have Championship know-how, he does.
Over all his games as a boss his teams have a points-per-game record of at least 1.3. Replicate his worst performance at any Championship club and he’ll get Oxford to safety – and that was he has been recruited for.
What Gary Rowett isn’t, is Des Buckingham. And that is not his fault.
United have faced a backlash more brutal than they anticipated when they fired Buckingham, the local lad made good, the man who delivered promotion and a fairytale story.
At least with this appointment they haven’t had their head turned by a star name or someone with no more experience of the level than Buckingham had.
I am not sure they would have been forgiven for that. They have though been decisive and the appointment is as pragmatic as Rowett’s teams usually are.
Many will see this as Oxford recruiting a firefighter. They think it is for the long-term – which in the Championship isn’t usually that long.
Either way, rightly or wrongly, the fairytale is over, this now is about hard reality.
Five months of grinding out the results to ensure what Buckingham achieved in the warmth of last May isn’t wasted when we get to the Spring of 2025.
