You always hurt the one you love, writes George Frew. And for the long-suffering supporters of Oxford United, these are words which carry a particularly bitter ring of truth.

For there is a depressing air pervading the Manor which hangs over the place like the mist that surrounded the doomed House of Usher.

Despite what happens against Cambridge United at home today, there are no quick fixes and no grounds for wide-eyed optimism a long, difficult campaign lies ahead.

Fans like Daniel Curtis who edits the Yellow Fever fanzine have seen it all before but even he admits that this season has got off to a pretty bleak start. "It's depressing, for sure," he says, drawing a mental blanket over the U's four league defeats to date.

"There seems to be a general malaise throughout the club at the moment we haven't even got a striker who can score goals and we keep messing around with different formations playing five in midfield is doomed to failure.

Apart from Beauchamp and Powell, who's going to score? There's no money available to buy new players and nothing to buy in the club shop. It all rubs off on the players, I'm sure.

We need to get new players and we need to get the merchandising side of things going. Oxford United needs to be a club which boosts its own image and sort out the PR side of things. We have to look at how other clubs like Reading, for instance are doing it." Daniel, who has been a fan of Oxford United since well before the glory days of Milk Cup victory in 1986, adds, "At the moment, things are certainly painful."

While it is one of football's much-loved jokes that 90 per cent of Manchester United supporters are more likely to live in Reykjavik than Rusholme, the U's, too have fans prepared to go much more than that extra mile for them.

Take Dave Clark, for instance. The 37-year old has followed the rollercoaster fortunes of Oxford for more than 20 years and regularly makes the 380-mile round-trip from his home in Rochdale to watch the men in yellow.

"If you love your club, I don't think that it makes any difference whether you travel three miles or 380 miles to see them," he says. "My family are from Oxford and part of our weekend was always going to the match so I got hooked on watching them and have stayed loyal ever since. It's part of my week now and I don't even think about it.

I'd be lost without Oxford United, but at the moment we lack playing staff, it has to be said. Apart from Joey (Beauchamp) who's going to get us more than eight goals this season? We need someone who'll be able to grab 15 or 20.

What Firoz Kassam has done since he came to the club has been admirable, but he's a minimalist and a businessman and I don't think he really cares about what goes on on the pitch. I'd like to see him release some money for new players.

And I really think that it's time is right for Denis Smith to go. He's got an eye for a player, but I question his skills at motivating players and his tactics. Against Wallsall, we lost because we sat back and invited them to attack us and they did. And we lost." There's scant consolation to be gained from the fact that the U's are not the only club who will struggle this season.

Between now and next May, the hearts of many loyal supporters up and down the land will be bruised and perhaps even broken.

But for those who regularly pay their money to walk through the Manor turnstiles, the harsh truth is that it looks like another winter of discontent and another season of those Oxford Blues...