Oxford United manager Des Buckingham has a decision on his hands about who starts in his midfield this Saturday after recent poor performances from Will Vaulks, a player that fans were over the moon to be getting in the summer.

Vaulks is a seasoned Championship player, with over 200 appearances in the second tier of English football. However, his performances so far this season have not been up to the standard of a player of his quality.

Vaulks not living up to the hype

Playing as a single-holding midfielder in a team that wants to play out from the back and build up play, Vaulks’ passing and awareness need to be nearly perfect.

According to Sofascore, the summer signing’s heatmap shows that he mainly operates in the central area of the pitch in between the 18-yard box and the edge of the centre circle in his own half. Whilst he clearly does move around the pitch into other areas, this central area is bright red in comparison, showing how much more time he spends in this area.

Being in this position too often invites pressure to have the ball taken off you, and when it does, the opposition are only a pass or two away from a goal-scoring opportunity.

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The lack of movement from this central area also prevents him from being a passing option for his back four and keeper at times. With Vaulks being a key player in how the team wants to beat the press and create chances, this can be a problem.

His latest performance has fans calling for Buckingham to play his other holding midfield option, Josh McEachran, against Swansea City this Saturday.

Many fans have felt that Vaulks is overly negative with his passing and has not been at the level required of him. Following their 1-1 draw with Portsmouth on 5th October, some were shouting from the stands for him to be replaced and he’s taken plenty of flak online as well.

McEachran has been struggling with an injury recently and has only been fit enough for the bench in the last two. With the former Chelsea player missing games against Luton, Portsmouth and West Brom meant Vaulks had to play 90 minutes in all of these.

Since the Oxfordshire local has been back, he has added more creativity from off the bench, hence why fans are calling for him to start.

McEachran’s heatmap is a lot more sparse than that of his teammate. Naturally, it shows him being in and around that central area of the pitch. As the holding midfielder, that is expected, and at times needed. But the key difference is that there are hardly any red areas. Instead, we see lots of small yellow dots around the middle third of the pitch.

This tells us that McEachran is moving around a lot more than Vaulks, not staying in one position for too long. This allows for other players in the team to drop into a central position to pick up the ball, allowing for a much more fluid midfield to create chances, which is a lot harder to defend against.

Being in this position, Vaulks needs to progress the ball up the field either through dribbling or finding forward passes. He plays alongside two attack-minded midfielders in Ruben Rodrigues and Idris El Mizouni who look to get on the ball in pockets of space between the midfield and defense to create chances. And at the moment, he just isn’t doing that enough, often opting to play the safe pass.

Not only that, Vaulks has made some costly errors. Multiple times this season, he has given the ball away in dangerous areas and Oxford has paid the price by conceding.

That scenario played out against Sunderland on Saturday when the 31-year-old played a lazy pass that was intercepted and put past Jamie Cummings just two passes later.

Oxford signing Vaulks showed intent

The Welsh international was the first signing of the 2024 summer transfer window for Oxford, who were looking to invest heavily in their recruitment to compete in the Championship as a newly promoted side.

Vaulks was a huge part of the Sheffield Wednesday team last season and was awarded the player of the year award at the end of the campaign. Vaulks chose to turn down a new contract to join Oxford this season, much to the surprise of many Wednesday fans. His decision was partly down to the vision United had shown him and how important he would be to that, according to journalist Joe Crann.

Many viewed this as a signing that showed United were coming to compete in the Championship. On paper, Vaulks has too much quality and experience for a side like Oxford, who have the lowest budget in the league, and were favourites to be relegated at the start of this season, but large parts of the fanbase have been disappointed by the reality.

The Championship season is grueling and United are going to need every bit of their squad to get them through it. Taking Vaulks out of the squad for a long period of time is going to negatively impact him, and the squad as a consequence.

However, for the time being, McEachran needs to be starting for United this Saturday in a crucial game to stop them falling down the table. United will be at home to Swansea, a fixture where they will be likely to have a lot of possession. This is where McEachran will shine, and give Vaulks a break after starting the last five matches.

Buckingham should side with the Oxford faithful and make the tweak ahead of a key game against a Swans side that have struggled this term.