{"id":649879,"date":"2024-12-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-27T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?p=649879"},"modified":"2024-12-26T15:29:18","modified_gmt":"2024-12-26T20:29:18","slug":"three-talking-points-oxford-united-cardiff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2024\/12\/27\/three-talking-points-oxford-united-cardiff\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Talking Points as Oxford United Win Against Cardiff"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oxford United<\/a> picked up just their second win in 17 and kicked off the new regime under Gary Rowett with a victory over Cardiff.<\/p>\n

The U’s took a three-goal lead at Grenoble Road but will be disappointed at conceding twice late on against their relegation rivals.<\/p>\n

Here are three talking points from the game.<\/p>\n

Oxford United Win Against Cardiff<\/h2>\n

Line-Up and Formation<\/h3>\n

There was little suggestion ahead of the game as to how Rowett would shape his team or the personnel that would be involved, but there were some notable tweaks.<\/p>\n

Firstly, Sam Long was brought into right-back over Peter Kioso while Will Vaulks was selected again in spite of some below-par performances. However, one change in formation came with Vaulks as Cameron Brannagan lined up alongside in the holding role.<\/p>\n

In attack, there was another start for Przemyslaw Placheta, to the surprise of many fans, while Ruben Rodrigues was another to keep his place in the first-team. The final selection was Mark Harris starting up top over Dane Scarlett.<\/p>\n

Players in Need of Performance Put In a Performance<\/h3>\n

And that takes us onto our next point because there’s a few Oxford players that look low on confidence and haven’t been performing at the levels that we know they are capable of.<\/p>\n

That changed against the Bluebirds with Long being touted after the game as a potential for Man of the Match while Vaulks put in one of his better displays in a yellow shirt.<\/p>\n

Harris would go on to net the opener – and his first goal since August – after some clever work from Placheta, who got just his fourth assist from 66 Championship appearances, before adding a third with a sensational strike from the best part of 30 yards.<\/p>\n

Oxford United Took Advantage of Their Dominant Spell<\/h3>\n

Cardiff started the stronger and would have been the happier side with their respective first-half display, despite the U’s taking a 1-0 lead into the break.<\/p>\n

However, Rowett’s side enjoyed their best spell after the restart and netted a further two goals – first though a Ciaron Brown header from a Tyler Goodrham corner before Placheta’s thunderbolt.<\/p>\n

But the Bluebirds grew into the game in the final ten and deprived Oxford of a rare clean sheet, netting twice late on.<\/p>\n

Obviously, the final score will be of relief to get the three points but also of frustration for not seeing the game out when it could have been more comfortable. That said, it was good to see Oxford take their chances when on top in the game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oxford United picked up just their second win in 17 and kicked off the new regime under Gary Rowett with a victory over Cardiff. The U’s took a three-goal lead at Grenoble Road but will be disappointed at conceding twice late on against their relegation rivals. Here are three talking points from the game. Oxford […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":335,"featured_media":649733,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8430,2509,33,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-649879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oxford-united","category-cardiff-city","category-championship","category-league-football"],"modified_by":"Dale Ventham, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/335"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649879"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":649882,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649879\/revisions\/649882"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}