After a mid-table finish the previous year Andy King looked to bolster his squad's chances of promotion by finding the rarest of breeds - a top-class finisher.

Few eyebrows were raised when £50,000 was spent on Sam Parkin, a youngster from Chelsea with little league experience - but a debut hat-trick on the opening game of the season suggested Town had finally found someone capable of shooting them out of League One. The 3-1 win over Barnsley was followed by another win, a 4-2 victory on the road that saw Town's triumvirate of strikers, including Danny Invincibile and Eric Sabin and Parkin all find the score sheet.

Sadly none of them would score in the next eight games in all competitions in a run of form that saw the fans turn the heat on King. A 2-0 defeat away at Cheltenham was the low point, Parkin receiving the first and only red card of his career so far before players and fans vented their frustrations towards each other at Whaddon Road.

Town returned to winning ways at home to Northampton - but results were sporadic. A 6-1 massacre of Southend in the LDV Trophy saw the Reds embark on a seven-game unbeaten run in the league - a sequence cruelly ended by Crewe just two weeks after Oxford had dumped Town out of the FA Cup in front of the BBC cameras. Still, their time would come, eh?

A 2-0 defeat to league winners Wigan kick-started another unbeaten run, this time Town finding the net with alarming regularity as they hit eight in two games against Chesterfield and Stockport.

Unfortunately the Reds couldn't sustain their promising form and the play-offs proved a mere pipe dream. Inconsistency was the Achilles heel as Town finished the campaign like they had the previous year, in mid-table. A 5-0 win against Notts County was followed by defeat against Colchester, a win away at Crewe followed by a thumping at Oldham. Town needed to find the attacking players that would allow them to sustain a creditable push towards the top of the table?