Ex-QPR & Almost-QPR Again, Jim Smith Profiled

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From The Telegraph "....[T]he allure of becoming Oxford manager was shown vividly by his response to an offer of the equivalent job at Queen's Park Rangers in March. "I said 'yes' at half past five in the evening, and 'no' at half past eight the next morning," he says.


Telegraph -10/10/2006 Oxford go back to the future
By Oliver Brown
Striding through the corridors of the Kassam Stadium, Jim Smith creates a powerful impression of pride and purpose. To confirm this, the Oxford United manager, greeted uniformly as 'gaffer', enters an office that would not embarrass a senior executive – expansive and elegantly furnished, by Conference standards at least, it serves as his engine room for driving the club back into business.
These days, an executive setting is not quite so out of keeping for Smith. He turns 66 this month, but has taken on the job not just of frontline manager but director, too, assisting his friend and chairman Nick Merry in every aspect of Oxford's recovery. The ravages of relegation have yet to be felt too acutely here, but the situation for any club that falls out of the League is precarious.
Stability is only likely to last for as long as Oxford's results hold up, which gives a good reason for Smith to savour this season's record of 14 games unbeaten up to tonight's game against Kidderminster. Recognising though, that the Conference is hardly the club's natural level, he admits that he would be profoundly disappointed if his team were any worse off.
When he returned to Oxford in March for a second spell as manager, Smith's stock was never higher. Twenty-one years after he had left in high dudgeon at then chairman Robert Maxwell's refusal to improve his contract, there was a chance to haul this club, so prominent in his affections, back from the precipice. Only it did not quite turn out that way.
On a drizzly May afternoon, with fans exiting in anguish from every corner of the Kassam, Oxford's League status ceased to be. Smith, still barely adjusted to the culture shock of League Two, faced an even starker reality. "I felt pretty low, but very determined in myself to stay and take the club back up," he says.
"I didn't think we would go down and we shouldn't have. I blame myself a little bit, because I think I put too much pressure on the team. One of the biggest problems was that we had no new players, and I was appalled at the standard. I expected that we could just turn them into Premier League players."
Much as Smith never shirks responsibility, he is equally not shy of a head-on attack on the club's administration under its previous chairman, the hotelier Firoz Kassam. The seeds of Oxford's decline were, it is widely believed, sown well before the change of manager. "This wasn't being run as a football club, it was being run as a business by non-football people," Smith says. "We had to bring the focus back to what this is."
As a football person to the core, he had no trouble on that front. But the diligence with which Smith has sought to revive the club does not bridge the more fundamental questions: Why Oxford, and why now? He is of retirement age, with 37 years at the sharp end of management behind him is there not, among the worthier sentiments that Oxford engenders, a sense of 'do I really need this?'
"Yeah, quite often!" he laughs, although you do not doubt for a moment that he is where he wants to be. A mainspring of this extraordinary loyalty is his idea of unfinished business, borne out of a frustration that his clash with Maxwell left him unable to lead Oxford in the First Division, having taken them there in the first place.
"I've had a lot of good times in football, but the best were at Oxford," he reflects. "We had a great team, and my biggest regret was leaving. I was probably a bit hasty, in all honesty."
Smith's second chance might be four tiers removed from the first, but what makes his motivation complete is the joy he derives from leading again. For three years he had acted as Harry Redknapp' loyal assistant at Portsmouth and Southampton, and he had had enough. In this context, the allure of becoming Oxford manager was shown vividly by his response to an offer of the equivalent job at Queen's Park Rangers in March. "I said 'yes' at half past five in the evening, and 'no' at half past eight the next morning," he says.
"I wouldn't have come back had it not been a bit special, and this is special."
Telegraph