Oxford United look to start another run going when they welcome Rochdale to Grenoble Road on Tuesday evening.
A first defeat in ten games at Bradford means that the U’s are looking to regain momentum when they face a Dale side who Head Coach Karl Robinson has plenty of time for:
“We went through the Bradford game again next day and then again this morning” he told iFollow. “I think we became desperate chasing the game, getting free kicks and shelling it into the box, which is not like us and it became predictable. I’d rather we kept faith and did it our own way but that’s not to say that the effort and endeavour weren’t there. The players now need to react the right way and get themselves set for one of a series of challenging games we have coming up.
“I have a lot of respect for Keith Hill and Rochdale. We are well into double figures now in terms of games we have played against each other so he knows how my team plays just as much as I know how his do! We are two very strong-minded people who believe in playing in certain ways, and I think he is a top manager, a true gentleman and someone you know will send his teams out there with honesty looking to play the right way.”
United will wait on the fitness of Ricky Holmes who has been having treatment on a troublesome back injury.
“Ricky has had three sessions with someone a lot of Premier League players believe in” Karl told us. “He has one more session and he is very upbeat and we just have to weigh up whether he is involved on Tuesday or at the weekend, or both.
“We have to be sensible because we have a remarkable run of games coming up where we are going to be so busy and we have to make sure we can have some sort of rotation in the games coming up in December and at Christmas. But injuries are no excuse. We have talented players here and have been magnificent in that run of nine games so now we have to see if we can start another similar run.”
See the full interview in iFollow.