Feature: Behind Oxford' sixteen year Manager of the Month hoodoo

In January 2005, Ramon Diaz’s Argentinian revolution led to the manager picking up the January Manager of the Month award.

Sixteen years and ten managers later, he remains the last Oxford coach to claim the accolade.

If it feels as though every other team's manager has won the award since then, that is because they have.

Oxford are the only team in the current 72 EFL teams to not win a Manager of the Month award since 2005 (excluding teams with less than 2 years in the Football League).

When Grant McCann picked up January’s edition, it became the 107^th consecutive month an Oxford United manager has not won the award - excluding Oxford’s four year stint in the National League where their managers ineligible to pick up the trophy.

That is a remarkable record for a team which, at least for the past decade, have largely been challenging towards the top end of the table, secured one promotion and a play-off appearance, and - in Chris Wilder, Michael Appleton and Karl Robinson - have had three of their most successful managers at the helm. 

A strange conundrum

Since the return to the Football League, Oxford have also usually been fighting closer to the top than the bottom, and during the conference they were consistently one of the better sides in the league.  

Oxford United league positions since 2010

Chris Wilder, now plying his trade in the premiership, left Oxford without the award. While his promotion was achieved outside the EFL, Wilder still had three and a half years in the Football League in which to win it.

Michael Appleton took a side to automatic promotion and consolidation in League One but he too failed to claim the award.

Even Pep Clotet’s slightly less successful reign included a six game unbeaten run between October and November and may have warranted a chance at the trophy.

Karl Robinson may trump them all in this respect though.

His side went nine unbeaten to pull away from relegation in 2018, and then went even better with 11 without defeat last season.

Neither of these were enough.

Nor was their ten-game unbeaten run this season – the longest so far in the league.

Robinson has won the award three times already in his career and all logic suggests he should have added one to his collection during his time at Oxford.

Who keeps getting them?  

A total of 46 different teams have won the award from the 107 possible for Oxford managers to claim (Football League only).

Of the awards given to rivals in Oxford's league at the time, Peterborough United and Southend United lead the way with five wins each.

Curiously, Southend won the League Two’s November award three years running between 2012-15.

In fact Southend have won seven of the League’s coaching awards since 2005 - all in League 2, having failed to pick up the award in any of the 10 years they spent in League One or the Championship during that period.

Southend, though, are Football League ever presents. More surprising is Torquay’s managerial record of four league awards since 2005, made even more impressive given they have played nine of the sixteen campaigns in non-league.

Although they preserved their league position right up to 2007, thanks mainly to former Oxford manager Ian Atkins. 

Four wins and a draw in the final five matches of the 2005-06 season was enough to win him Torquay's first manager of the month award of the era, keep them in the football league, and send a certain Jim Smith's Oxford United down in their place. 

Some consolation is that Torquay were relegated in 24th the next season. 

But Oxford's four years in the conference can - in some way - be traced back to the Manager of the Month curse. 

An honourable mention must also go to Paul Lambert at Ipswich, who has managed to win the League One award three times in the last two years – no one has won more during that period – whilst simultaneously having fans calling for him to be sacked.

Teams with the most manager of the month awards when in the same league as Oxford

Could it be a good thing?

Despite failing to win the personal honour, all three of Wilder, Appleton and Robinson will go down as having successful spells at the club.

Paul Lambert may not.

Ipswich have famously struggled with consistency in the last few years, but perhaps their real problem is the consistency of Lambert in winning unlikely manager accolades.

Ipswich have had an average drop off of 1.07 points per game in the ten matches after winning the manager of the months award across Paul Lambert’s three accolades.

Torquay are also one of seven clubs who beat United’s managers to the awards but have now dropped out of the football league.

Perhaps the claims that a manager of the month award is bad luck are ringing true.  

Last season, seven out of the nine Manager of the Month winners ended the season with their side in a lower position than when they won the award.

The two exceptions are Accrington – who won it when in 17^th and finished the season in 17^th – and Coventry who did not move up the table either, though being top made it somewhat harder for them to do that.

A similar trend happened in 2018-19 season, with five of the nine winners finishing lower come the end of the season, and one team remaining in the same position. 

2018-19 also offered us one of the most drastic impacts of the manager of the month award in recent history.

Stuart McCall won the first award of 2019 for Scunthorpe United and took them from relegation candidates to 14^th and mid table safety.

But after the accolade, Scunthorpe went on to pick up only nine points from their remaining sixteen games and went down in 23^rd position.

McCall lost his job less than three months after collecting Manager of the Month.

A similar fate occurred to Steve Evans at Peterborough who won the award in August 2017 but would see less than a month of 2018 before being dismissed.

All this is without mentioning the last Oxford manager to win the award.

Ramon Diaz brought with him Latin American flair, along with a short-lived flirtation with the playoff race.

But the pinnacle of his tenure – and surely of the former Inter Milan player’s career – was the four wins from six in January which earned him Oxford’s last Manager of the Month award.

This, though, was an incident of the Manager of the Month curse striking again.

Oxford then lost four out of five in February and March.

The season was all but over, and the joy of Manager of the Month short lived. 

Oxford were 13^th when Diaz picked up the prize. They finished in 15^th. Diaz left a game before the seasons end.

Robinson is unlikely to leave in such circumstances, and neither Appleton or Wilder were pushed out of the door despite not getting the prize.

Maybe avoiding the award is a lucky charm. But then again, it’s probably just another quirk of being an Oxford fan. A very odd quirk at that.