Oxford United’s staff and players will get to spend Christmas Day with their families ahead of their Boxing Day trip to Ipswich Town. Well, most of Christmas Day at least…
“We will travel on Christmas night but we will let people spend time with their families in the day and then depart later in the afternoon” Karl Robinson explained to iFollow. “It’s a strange one staying in hotels on Christmas Day. There is usually a skeleton staff and the hotels can be soulless. But it’s all we have ever known!
“It’s different and people often say ‘that must be hard’ but from our point of view most of us have only ever known doing this so it won’t make any difference; Bank Holidays don’t usually get in the way for us. It’s great actually with no traffic on the road!
“We will prepare properly and we will be ready on Boxing Day.
“It's going to be hard at Portman Road. There will maybe be a bit of a hostile atmosphere because of our performances there in recent years but Ipswich are a really good team with really good players. I know some of those players personally and they are good people too. People talk about the resources they have available and how they are a sleeping giant, but you also have to put a team together and they are certainly performing very well this year.
“I’d be very surprised it they aren’t in the top two at the end of the season. They are the best team I’ve seen - them and Sheffield Wednesday maybe. We will have played those teams back to back, then Charlton with their new Manager and Exeter at home so we have some difficult games over Christmas
“But we are playing well ourselves, we have players back from injury and like I said, we will be ready.”
See the full interview plus full versions of the Christmas reports below, only in iFollow