Looking ahead to the trip up to Radcliffe on the weekend, Ross Jenkins has called for positivity despite the loss to King’s Lynn as the performance was more than good enough to take three points from the game.

He said: “We’ve shown great character, the performance was there, and the goals will arrive. We have to move on now and stay positive because that’s a real positive performance.”

Jenkins understands that gravity of the game on the weekend but was quick to ease the pressure as Oxford look to claw their way out of the relegation zone.

“We need to look forward now to Radcliffe. It will be a massive game for us, but we don’t want to put too much pressure on the boys to emphasise that. It’s important we replicate the same performance and then the result will look after itself.”

The coaching staff were encouraged by the performance in midweek and even moved away from their norms in the post-match de-brief to highlight the positives to the players.

“The stats were high, and the boys need to take pride in that. We’re not very stat heavy in terms of game statistics and half time or full time, but it was important the boys saw that today. I think we limited them to three shots and that’s massive.”

Speaking about the relentless nature of the league and the importance of picking up a win on Saturday, Jenkins said: “Every game is big. This game was big, the game before was big. We don’t want to put massive importance on every single game and make the boys feel under pressure because there’s no pressure.

“The boys need to keep playing well. They played well tonight; they didn’t get the result. That’s football, that’s life, you have to move on.”