Oxford United's CEO Tim Williams wrote the following programme notes for the team's Sky Bet League One match against Port Vale:
Thank you to all our supporters for joining us today, and a very warm welcome to our visitors from Port Vale – we hope you enjoy your visit and have a safe journey back home.
With two home wins behind us, and two excellent away wins at Derby and Barnsley, the season has started really well, and I hope that strong start continues this afternoon.
It would be easy to be surprised by the start we’ve had but, after being fortunate enough to spend time with everyone in Spain during pre-season, I’ve seen first-hand the hard work and attention to detail from the coaching team and we are already reaping the rewards of that.
It’s important though that we don’t get complacent – there are still 41 games to play and 123 points on the table so there is a long way to go. What’s key to me is the way the team and the club operates both on and off the pitch, and I have seen some significant improvement in that over the last few months.
Some of the more visible changes have included brilliant shirt launches and an excellent season-ticket campaign. Our online content is really getting noticed as well, with some high-profile supporters such as Jordan Flynn starting to engage, which is a real endorsement of the hard work that all of the marketing team are putting in. We are only at the start of a long journey of improvement across the board and I hope you will see more of that as we progress through the season.
I was also pleased to see so many of you at the recent season-ticket holder Open Day. One of the most important aspects of our club moving forward is how accessible we want to be to the entire community, and this is just one example of that. It was great to see the players taking part with such enthusiasm, be that in signing sessions, having photos taken or in the training session itself, which at close range shows just how talented our group of athletes are.
With the foundations we are putting in place, the club is moving in the right direction, and I am sure you can see that in the performances on the pitch as well as some of the work we are doing off it. We will not stand still though or get comfortable with where we are. Across the club we are constantly looking for ways to improve what we do and how we do it, and I am grateful for the superb team of professionals we have at the club right now to help deliver this. There is some serious talent here and everyone connected to the club should be very proud and excited for the future.
I hope you enjoy today’s game and, as ever, thank you for your support.
Tim Williams
You can read the full programme online at www.matchdayfix.com/oufc featuring exclusive interviews with Tyler Goodrham and Ben Purkiss, plus news from all around the club, editorials, stats, history, children's quizzes and much more.