I’m looking forward to playing Gillingham at the Kassam Stadium today.

I hope a lot of you will be there to help us carry on our excellent form at home.

Last time we were here wasn’t the prettiest match against Wycombe, but we showed a different side to our game and fought extremely hard to get a point.

Three wins and one draw from four home games is a pretty good return and it has been good to have fans back to support us because it makes such a difference to everything.

We wondered if people might be worried about returning to football matches and being in crowds, but our support home and away has been excellent.

Sam Long: I had to stay positive through injuries and Covid

We’ve sold out every away league game other than Bolton and that home record has been achieved partly because of the noise and support from our own fans.

We’ll never take that support for granted.

We know that fans look forward to Saturday afternoon at the football all week.

It becomes a focal point for the weekend and the first thing people discuss when they go back to work, school or college on Monday morning.

I’m lucky. I’ve never worked a day in my life! That’s because I love my job and going in every day is a pleasure.

I work with some outstanding people who live and breathe Oxford United.

It’s an obsession for all of us and every day we’re at the training ground trying to be even better.

Obviously you can’t win every game you play, no team does that.

So when we get a bad result like we did last Saturday at Cheltenham, then we’re in even earlier on the Monday to discuss it, see how we can adapt, and then we spend a whole week building towards putting it right.

Karl Robinson: Focus on the game - not the touchline

Sometimes you don’t have that much time because of a Tuesday game.

But we’ve had a full week and been boosted by Marcus McGuane, Elliott Moore, Cameron Brannagan and Sam Winnall joining training each day.

Any team in our division would miss those four, so it’s good to have them back and pushing for a start.

I said every shirt was up for grabs and we’d pick a team based on how we trained. Credit to the players who have given me a lot to think about…

The training ground was a bit of a blank canvas when we moved in three years ago, but gradually we’ve filled the walls with motivational images and quotes.

There’s a great one in the classroom: “No club in the country outworks us”.

This week, we put a new one up on the gym.

All it says is ‘We are Oxford. United’ but it contains images of the academy players, the first team and the women’s side celebrating a goal.

It’s because the women have added an extra night’s training and have use of the same gym as every other team in the club.

The fact they added an extra evening’s work tells you plenty about their determination and ambitions.

The picture is a way of making them know that they’re a central part of what we do.