The Oxford United Chairman, Sumrith 'Tiger' Thanakarnjanasuth, wrote the following notes in his Rochdale programme column:
Good afternoon everyone and welcome back for our game against Rochdale. It comes at a time when we are playing really good football and there are smiles all around the club. Long may that continue.
I speak to Karl all the time and the one thing he keeps saying at the moment is that we haven’t achieved anything yet. He is right. We are making significant progress in all areas, but we are only one third of the way through the season and we must concentrate now and make sure we build on a very promising start. I don’t just mean on the pitch but I also mean all areas at the club, and it is good that Andy Taylor is hosting a ‘Fan Engagement’ meeting before the game because we welcome fan ideas and your involvement in what we are trying to do.
It was great to hear Karl speak so passionately after the win at Rotherham last week and ask the supporters to come in numbers to all our games. We have amazing fans and the average is rising all the time: right now we are about 400 up per game on this stage last season and we still have home games against Sunderland, Portsmouth, leaders Ipswich and clubs like Bristol Rovers, who always bring a big away following. Those are encouraging signs, but I think this team is something to shout about, so I would like to repeat what Karl said and urge you all to keep coming along and to bring people to see what is happening here.
I will be at today’s game - with ten guests before you ask! - and then we have meetings with everyone behind the scenes before we make the final preparations for our Carabao Cup game on Tuesday night. We also start our FA Cup campaign with a game at Hayes & Yeading, which will be a real test of character. The FA Cup was one of the reasons I fell in love with English football many years ago, so I would love to have a great cup run this time.
So right now, everything is going well, but that makes it even more important to strengthen and keep working. There are some very exciting developments just around the corner, things which we believe will give us a very solid foundation to build from. Those will be announced soon, but in the meantime let’s enjoy this moment and do all we can to make it ten games unbeaten with another positive performance.
Tiger
You can read the full programme online at www.matchdayfix.co.uk/oufc