Oxford United head for Cheltenham on Tuesday night looking to progress in the Checkatrade Trophy despite exiting the FA Cup on Saturday.
A narrow 1-0 defeat at the Championship side was overshadowed somewhat by a serious looking injury to substitute Shandon Baptiste, as Head Coach Karl Robinson told iFollow this morning:
“First and foremost I want to thank everyone who was there on Saturday. It was a great turn out and I had a half hour conversation with four or five fans after and tried to explain that this situation is not as simple as some people seem to think it is. I also want to thank everyone for the messages and well wishes towards Shandon after his injury. I was at a game yesterday and everyone was asking how he was; it’s great when the industry all pulls together like that so thanks to all those people and the Brentford staff and fans who were brilliant.
“We will have more news once the swelling goes down but fingers crossed because I know there were Premier League teams who would have put in a bid this window for him. It has been horrendous. Rob Hall, Jon Obika, young Viktor Milton from the under 18s; all with knee injuries. It’s not nice but it’s important we support them all physically and mentally. We do those things right and Shandon will recover, we just won’t put a timescale on it.
“It will be a good game at Cheltenham. This club has a history of doing well in the competition and I know the Cheltenham Manager well and he will want to beat us.
"I have seen him grow as a coach and in his first jobs; he is a true gentleman and I have tremendous respect for him. We will look forward to going there and being as competitive as we can be and hopefully getting through.”
See the full interview plus Karl’s thoughts on Jack Stevens stepping up to be back-up keeper, all in iFollow right now.