Oxford United’s Under 23 teams had an experimental look again this afternoon as they were beaten 4-2 at Premier League Fulham.
Defender Steven Johnson-Fikula and an own goal were the United scorers and Coach Chris Allen told us
“It has been difficult in the last couple of games because we want to look at a number of trialists with one eye on next season but we also want to be fair to our own players and that has made it very difficult to get a settled side and build that little bit of understanding. That certainly showed in the first half when we were a bit disjointed and were 2-0 down quite quickly from two set pieces, the first a free kick and the second a corner.
We got back in to it when one of the trialists in the side did well down the wing and crossed to Steven Johnson-Fikula who was still up from a set piece of our own and he scored to make it 2-1.
We went 3-1 down when we let a runner go and then 4-1 before the same trialist did some more good work and a Fulham defender put the ball into his own net to end the scoring at 4-2.
We were much better in the last half hour of the game and there are always positives: Ivo Pekalski got 90 minutes in midfield for example and Tsun Dai got more game time after an injury but we can do a lot better and once we get back to a settled side after Christmas I would expect a little bit more consistency."
United
Stevens, Trialist (Taylor), Trialist, Johnson-Fikula, Norman, Trialist (Heap), Pekalski, Dai (Hopkins), Trialist, Bradbury, Noel-Williams (Trialist)