How Oxford achieved Championship survival

Oxford United achieved safety with a win at home against Sunderland last weekend

There will be no parade, no pictures on walls or stories to tell the grandchildren.

When more than half the league has been proven to be better than you, should you even be celebrating at all? The answer is an unequivocal yes, if you are Oxford United.

With the battles for the title, the play-offs and the race to stay up chaotically going to the wire, the U's securing their own place in the Championship for next season has barely been remarked upon nationally. Not like last year.

No Wembley final, no fairytale. Just desire, hard work, togetherness and of course, talent.

But those connected with the club - from the very top to the rank-and-file fan - all know that what United have achieved over the past season equals, maybe even eclipses what was hard-earned 12 months ago.

Oxford's miraculous run to promotion from League One saw them arrive in the second tier, ahead of schedule and with only a few short weeks to put together a team for it.

The Championship has been everything they hoped for and feared in equal measure - joyous, loud, exciting and colourful, but also hard. Really hard.

Oxford United from the outside might look a very different club to the one that left League One.

The most obvious upheaval was the installation of Gary Rowett - with all his Championship know-how - in place of hometown hero Des Buckingham.

"This is going to hurt, but it will be worth it," could have been the mantra.

Oxford, known as a stable club for managers, now have had a change in each of the past three seasons.

Wins, though, healed the wounds, draws were vital in the final reckoning.

United have also broken their transfer record - twice - and were not skimping with the signings of players like Jamie Cumming who played every minute of every league game in goal and has been one of the top performers in the division.

Or Michal Helik and Alex Matos who suffered relegation with Huddersfield last season and played like that was not an experience they ever wanted to repeat.

In their final league game Oxford will face Swansea City

The ownership group has shouldered record losses as they continue to work towards a new stadium, which they see as essential to not just long-term success, but the club's very existence.

The Kassam, though, has been sold out every single week. Those big crowds and big atmospheres, that built up in the League One run-in, carried on all the way through the season.

The three-sided stadium has been as much a surprise asset as an embarrassment.

Oxford have picked up the same points at home as West Bromwich Albion, more than Norwich and only one fewer than Middlesbrough.

But it is the smallest in the Championship, and that compounds the financial pressures.

To illustrate the challenge of the Championship, with the Premier League parachute payments to clubs who draw double Oxford's attendance and more, Oxford twice had long barren runs - one under each manager.

But Buckingham's United produced performances and results to create belief that the U's could belong.

Under Rowett the overall form would have them on the fringes of the play-offs.

Yet, in the win against a full-strength Sunderland at the weekend, nine of those who featured for the U's were Wembley winners under Buckingham, and player of the year Ciaron Brown was a free-transfer signing by Karl Robinson three years ago.

United again relied on Cameron Brannagan to dig them out of trouble when the going really got tough - he's been doing that for seven years for the club.

Sam Long, who got the winner at Sheffield Wednesday this month has been with Oxford since the age eight. He's 30 now.

The more things change, the more they stay the same? Maybe. Or you could argue that this is sustainable growth in action.