ROVERS FANZ VIEW COLUMN
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What a week it was for Rovers as a slender victory away at Darlington was swiftly followed by a shock League Cup triumph at Brighton, a team two levels above us. In fact, looking at the form book going into that Carling Cup clash, it was not such a surprising outcome and it might have been more of a shock if the Seagulls had won. Brighton have started their Championship campaign in disastrous fashion and picked up only one point in the first four games. Rovers meanwhile have strung together an impressive run of results to get among the early pacesetters in League Two and hopefully we saw Friday night's meeting with Southend go without a hitch to preserve our superb unbeaten run. Not even Gerry Francis' old Third Division champions of 1990 made it as far into the season undefeated, as they lost a League Cup tie 2-0 to Portsmouth in what was the fourth match of the term and then were beaten 1-0 at Bolton in the fourth league game. The current Rovers team have at least gone five without defeat and regardless of what has gone before them, this is a great platform from which to push on for the rest of the season. We still have some way to go before club records might be broken though as the promotion-winning side of 1973-74 went 27 league games without defeat before Wrexham beat us 1-0 in February, and added to five matches unbeaten at the end of the previous season, that makes it 32 league games in a row to aim for. Ian Atkins is no stranger to moulding teams that are difficult to beat as his Oxford squad lasted until the tenth game, a visit to eventual champions Doncaster, before they suffered their first loss. The Kassam Stadium became a fortress and the Us avoided defeat at home right up until March when Huddersfield took all three points back to Yorkshire, and this happened just days before Atkins was suspended by the chairman for being linked with the job here. Funnily enough, they had an almost identical start to this year's Rovers team by taking ten points from their opening four fixtures and winning away at First Division Millwall in the Carling Cup. As a reward, Oxford got a decidedly unglamorous draw at home to Thames Valley neighbours Reading in Round 2 last season. Thankfully, Rovers came out of the hat with Premiership Norwich City in last week's draw, giving us a long-awaited Cup night to look forward to in late September. Due to Ray Graydon's horrible record in knockout competitions, we haven't pitted ourselves against a top-flight team since annihilating Derby County in January 2002 in the FA Cup. We won that one convincingly at their place and the season before, we got a draw away at Everton in the League Cup, so if we can keep Darren Huckerby quiet then we should not fear the trip to Norwich. Rovers seem to be quite useful playing on Premiership grounds! As we showed at Brighton, any one of our strikers can come in and score goals and it was brilliant to see Lee Thorpe and Richard Walker on the scoresheet. All four of our senior strikers are off the mark already and the pressure is really on Junior Agogo and Jamie Forrester now to keep their shirts.
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