It’s time for Oxford United to get back on track when they travel to Bury on Tuesday night.
That’s the message from Manager Pep Clotet who has seen his side lose back to back games after starting the season strongly.
“It’s absolutely about the reaction after Saturday” he told iFollow “but it’s also about understanding what teams are doing to us now. They have respect for what the players did at the start of the season and the way we play and teams realise that if they let us play we are going to have a good day. So teams are using their resources well and changing against us which represents a new challenge for us.
“That happened on Saturday and made it difficult for us so we just have to make sure that when it happens we are up to the task and have the resources to win the game. Tomorrow is about putting everything behind us and getting back on the right track.
“We need to be confident because the reason teams are changing is because we have been doing really well and they have to find a way to stop us. But we also need to be able to adapt and change things up and expect to come under intense pressure and intense closing down. We need to upgrade our game because we all expect more from ourselves.
“Bury are in a false position and have a very good team with really good players. They played well against Charlton and maybe that might make things click for them so we expect a tough test.”
The U’s will wait on the fitness of Jon Obika but could have Christian Ribeiro back in the squad.
“Dwight Tiendalli is maybe a week away but Ribeiro is training with us and may be involved” Pep said. “We will assess Obika because we had to take him off at half time because he felt something was wrong with his groin. We will assess it and hope that the news is positive.”
See more of the interview above, plus we catch up with Simon Eastwood and see how Agon Mehmeti is settling in, all in iFollow.