IT has been such a busy week for everyone at Oxford United.

Not only were we preparing for today’s home game against Fleetwood, but we were also working towards Thursday’s transfer deadline.

I quite like the idea of moving the deadline forward to the first week rather than the end of August.

But whenever you choose makes no difference really – clubs will always be doing business right up to the wire.

Sometimes you have to be a little patient.

You learn that as you get older – but it can still be a little bit frustrating.

When we came back from Ireland I said we were close to a permanent signing and a really exciting loan.

Those were Jamie Hanson and Ricky Holmes!

But that’s nobody’s fault, by the way, these things take time.

Everyone has worked tirelessly over the summer to assemble a squad that we believe is a million miles better than the one that ended last season.

Tiger, for example, really has been fantastic.

You cannot bring in 11 players plus an entire under 23 squad without real investment and I thank him for that.

But everyone has been going the extra mile this summer.

Wednesday was a perfect example of this.

Myself, Faz, Shaun Derry and Mark Thomas, head of recruitment, were there to welcome Jamie Hanson when he arrived in Oxford from Derby.

Then we stayed so late making calls to other clubs and talking about other targets that Thommo ended up having to stay in a hotel just to get a couple of hours sleep before we all started again at 8am!

From a manager’s point of view, the adrenaline and excitement of trying to build a competitive squad far outweighs any tiredness.

We knew we had a good set of players here, but bringing in Ricky Holmes just raises the bar again.

I know some of you will be saying ‘well it didn’t work at Barnsley’, but Shaun Derry said it all when he called it a ‘Perfect Storm’.

Barnsley played as well as they can and we played just about as badly as we can too!

That will not happen again.

It was hugely disappointing but it is out of the way and it was a real wake up call for us all.

The reaction has been positive, the players were hurt by that result, and with the fans support we are determined to put it right this afternoon.

IT is team photoshoot time tomorrow and we will be in the centre of Oxford at one of the colleges for the annual picture.

It was Tiger’s idea to do it in the centre of the town because he sees the link to such a famous city as a major plus for the football club.

I agree with him and it will be good to take the players down to the city centre to see what Oxford is all about.

Little things like that really make everyone aware of what it means to wear the yellow shirt on a matchday.

Whether it is Town or Gown we want the whole of Oxford to be right behind us.