Oxford United suffered a setback but are still in the chase for the play-off places despite defeat to Portsmouth last night.
That’s the verdict from Karl Robinson who saw his side beaten 1-0 at the Kassam Stadium but wasn’t too downhearted after another close game between the sides:
“I thought the first half was very good and very even” he told iFollow. “In the second half they probably had the advantage for 20 minutes but then in the last 15 minutes we created a number of chances.
“When you play Portsmouth you never have an easy game. Kenny’s teams don’t let you do that. It was a really honest game and you never hear one bad word said by us or Portsmouth against each other and yet when the whistle goes we just go for each other and the gloves are off.
“It was a good game between two very honest teams, decided by a great cross and a great header.
“We are disappointed to lose but if we had lost just one in that run where we won nine in a row, then won today to put ourselves five points off the top eight, then everyone would be saying “Oxford are in this” . So we have to take stock of how well we have done. This feels like a big step back and we are disappointed but we have still put ourselves into a great position and that’s the bit we have to focus on.
“We had three really good chances in the last minute, chances you would expect us to score. And those are the fine margins we talk about: in that same winning run those were going in. Today they didn’t. The margins against Portsmouth are so fine and we feel we are still right in this.”
See full highlights in iFollow.