Des Buckingham not concerned by lack of wins after Oxford held by Reading
Posted Wednesday, December 13, 2023 by PA
New Oxford head coach Des Buckingham is not concerned that, after the 1-1 draw at local rivals Reading, he has now failed in four attempts to gain his first League One victory.
Both goals came shortly before the interval, with defender Ciaron Brown giving Oxford the lead in the 39th minute with a stooping header – only for former United loanee Sam Smith to equalise four minutes later.
Buckingham, who replaced the departed Liam Manning last month, said: “I’ve only been here [at the club] for a few weeks.
“We’ve played two of the top teams in Peterborough and Bolton and I’ve really had only about three training sessions with the group.
“That’s all I’ve had…and that’s not passing the buck there!
“And tonight, we’ve got a good result with a very different team. So it’s not really a concern to me right now.
“I think that we’ll come good, it just needs a bit of time.
“It was a good derby game but we were missing a good few key players so we had to make some changes tonight, a lot of them enforced.
“I changed a few things that we’ve done in the last two weeks and I thought that we deserved to win the game.
“At the end, we just couldn’t convert the chances, but we’ll take a point.”
Oxford had close to 3,000 fans at the SCL Stadium.
Buckingham added: “We had unbelievable support. We know they travel in their numbers but it’s a derby and it has been a long time since this one has been on the cards.
“They were absolutely wonderful tonight. It was a really good, strong atmosphere.”
Reading are now four points off safety near the foot of the table.
“A point is a point and we will take it,” Ruben Selles, the Reading manager, said.
“It was a competitive game and, at times, we showed that we could control it and we could score. We also defended well.
“We came back from 1-0 down and then at the end, especially from a couple of set-plays, we would have lost the game three or four weeks ago.
“But the team is in a good moment and in a good spirit. I was also very happy with the effort we put in.
“So I will happily take that point and we move forward.
“We started the game well, we had the ball and we made the right decisions so that we created certain situations.
“We have no depth yet when we can dominate for 95 or 100 minutes.
“But the good thing about the second half was that we managed to stay in the game.
“We had to adapt and adjust and we did not concede another goal. This is all part of the game.”
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