Oxford United go into Tuesday night’s final group game of the Papa John’s Trophy looking to keep the momentum going after back to back league wins
“We had an excellent result at the weekend and then we move on to Tuesday night and prepare properly and pick a team to try to win the game” Craig Short told iFollow today as he looked forward to facing Spurs U21s at the Kassam Stadium.
“It shows what a good strong squad we have now that we could change all eleven from Saturday and still be very competitive in League 1. But having said that, we were very disappointed with the performance in the last game in the competition which also came after a good away win: we won at Sheffield Wednesday then lost at home to Stevenage after being a goal up.
“We have to keep the club in a good place with a performance that backs up Saturday at Burton.
"If players come in to the side then they have to perform because they can’t go knocking on the Manager’s door asking why they haven’t been playing unless they back it up with a performance. If you don’t do well when you get into the side then you have no right to be banging on that door.
“Simon Eastwood showed on Saturday that you have to be ready. He was so calm, played well and did his job really well.
“And even behind him we have competition to be on the bench with some excellent young goalkeepers coming through. We will get another couple of the young players on the bench as well tomorrow to get that experience.
"Ben Davis is away with Thailand but Josh Johnson will be involved and one or two more although we won’t have Tyler Goodrham with us because he is out on loan and doing really well there. But whoever plays we need to carry on the way we played on Saturday and we need everyone to perform.”
See the full interview plus the thoughts of keepers Simon Eastwood and Kie Plumley in iFollow.