Karl Robinson isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but then which manager is? His abrasive, outspoken style has got many an opposing fan’s back up, and that’s not to mention what referees and fourth officials might think of him.
But the Oxford United manager provides one of those rare stories of somebody whose playing career amounted to a journeyman spell across the non-league pyramid but made it management anyway. It was in the tracksuit - not the playing kit - that he was always more likely to excel.
On Monday night he comes up against Mikel Arteta and Premier League leaders Arsenal in an FA Cup third-round tie which will draw the eyes of the nation to the Kassam Stadium.
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It’s not been the most positive of campaigns so far for the U’s, with last season’s near-miss with the play-offs being followed by a slow start to 2022-23. Even in a recent eight-game unbeaten run in League One, Oxford won only twice with Robinson scrambling to get the best out of his squad.
His attempt to do exactly that was featured in the BBC’s recent podcast series ‘Moment of Truth’, which followed Robinson and his Rotherham United counterpart Paul Warne as their two sides aimed for promotion to the second tier last season. In it, Robinson and his family spoke of the emotional toil involved for those around managers when there’s so much pressure piled onto every result.
That series also revealed much about Robinson’s personality. In the dressing room he came across as being far more aggressive and confrontational than Warne, demanding every last ounce of effort out of his players. He seemed unforgiving of anything other than excellence behind closed doors. But there were also the moments when he was fiercely loyal to his players, and that kind of attitude has been in evidence once more this term.
By the end of October the Oxford boss had already been shown four yellow cards and was handed a touchline ban for the trip to Bolton Wanderers. “If I have to get booked every week to fight for these players then I’ll do it,” he said after his fourth card in the draw at Portsmouth.
Robinson has often been vocal about referees, and when he sees standards in opposing dressing rooms that he wouldn’t stand for in his own, he is also quick to say how he feels.
“We just had the dressing room door open to listen to their celebrations,” he said after a 1-0 loss to fellow play-off contenders Plymouth Argyle in April 2022. “We’ll be seeing these again, it’s no problem with me. We turn the music off when we’re up against teams that we’re playing against because you don’t want to rile people. This might be a Wembley game [in the play-off final].
“Sometimes you need to respect other teams a little bit more because we’re a good team, with generally good morals.”
Now in his fifth full season at Oxford, Robinson is becoming as synonymous with the Yellows as he was with Milton Keynes Dons, where he was handed the manager’s role at the age of just 29 after previously being assistant to Paul Ince. There, he took them to regular top-half finishes in League One – including two play-off runs, before leading them to their first ever Championship season with promotion in 2015.
Along the way he brought through a 16-year-old Dele Alli, turned Benik Afobe into a regular goalscorer after years of hidden promise, and nurtured Will Grigg to deliver the kind of performances in front of goal which made him a short-term cult figure in the mid-2010s.
There were other success stories, but the headline moment came when MK beat Louis van Gaal’s Manchester United 4-0 in the EFL Cup in 2014. It was a night which saw Stadium:MK record its highest attendance and got the city buzzing, with Robinson at the heart of their growing reputation.
When he was sacked in 2016 shortly after the club’s relegation back to the third tier, he had been the third-longest-serving manager in the Football League. But that departure wasn’t the end of Robinson’s affinity for Milton Keynes, where he still lives, and his daughter Jasmine now works for the Dons.
After a short spell with Charlton Athletic, Robinson arrived at Oxford in 2018 and has led them to their most consistent run in almost a quarter of a century. His methods engender a faith in him from board members which means there is no rush to push him out of the door. He has earned the right to ride the U’s through their downturn in 2022-23 after finishes of fourth, sixth and eighth in the last three years.
And if he can take a big scalp on Monday by defeating the best team in the country so far this season, it can only bolster his reputation for being a great football manager. Sure, he has a prickly personality that might wind some people up. But even the very best leaders upset a few doubters along the way.
Still only 42 and with a lot of football management left in him, Karl Robinson is doing very nicely, thank you very much.
*18+ | BeGambleAware | Odds Subject to Change
