Swansea boss Luke Williams hails best away performance of season at Oxford

Posted Saturday, November 02, 2024 by PA

Swansea boss Luke Williams described his team’s 2-1 win at Oxford as their best away performance of the season.

Strikers Zan Vipotnik and Florian Bianchini struck in the 38th and 80th minutes as the Swans at last found the net after failing to score in October.

Sub Dane Scarlett pulled a goal back two minutes from time for Oxford, who slipped to a first home defeat of the campaign.

Williams said: “There’s some relief but I think we deserved to win today and that’s important for me.

“Oxford threw absolutely everything at us and we could have dealt with that a bit better but I still think we were value for the victory.

“I think we played football how we wanted to play football from the beginning.

“I’d tried to convince the players that if we kept playing as we want to play then goals would come.

“It’s probably our best away performance for 90 minutes. I think we have performed at a similar level at home but today we were more clinical in front of goal.

“We should take confidence from being the first team to win at Oxford this season because I can see why they had that record.

“In the closing stages of the game they put a lot of pressure on us.

“I’m pleased in the manner we scored the goals – they were proper strikers’ goals, where you have to concentrate and make sure you don’t tense up in that moment.

“I’ve been asked a lot lately about goals but we have scored two away from home today. The next challenge is to maintain that level of performance and continue to score goals.”

Oxford head coach Des Buckingham said: “I didn’t think we were very good at all today, for large parts of the game.

“Yet despite being poor, we have still created three very good chances before Dane scored his at the end.

“That’s the most disappointing thing because we are so much better than what we have just shown.

“We need to start the game a hell of a lot better than we did, and make sure that we believe we are good enough to perform at this level – that’s what I want to see and we will need to see on Tuesday.

“We have had a really good six to eight months. We knew this season was going to be a challenge, we need to be sure that when we hit these challenges we are clear on what we need to do and how we do it.

“We don’t get carried away or lose ourselves in these moments.

“We will lose games of football but we’re not losing in that way, not while I’m here.

“We’re a close group, we’re clear on what we are doing and we need to make sure we address what we need to address.”