{"id":650639,"date":"2025-01-15T00:00:01","date_gmt":"2025-01-15T05:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?p=650639"},"modified":"2025-01-14T17:00:16","modified_gmt":"2025-01-14T22:00:16","slug":"three-talking-points-oxford-united-draw-plymouth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/01\/15\/three-talking-points-oxford-united-draw-plymouth\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Talking Points as Oxford United Draw at Plymouth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oxford United<\/a> remain unbeaten in the league under Gary Rowett after the U’s drew 1-1<\/a> at bottom club, Plymouth.<\/p>\n

Will Vaulks opened his Oxford account on the stroke of half time but the hosts netted a leveller in the second half.<\/p>\n

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

Oxford United Draw at Plymouth<\/h2>\n

Tale of Two Halves<\/h3>\n

Oxford found themselves on the back foot for much of the first half and were fortunate to go into the break with the lead after a wonderful strike from Vaulks on the stroke of half time.<\/p>\n

Plymouth had more of the ball, better chances and forced Jamie Cumming into a top save.<\/p>\n

However, Oxford’s goal came against the run of play and headed into the break with the lead.<\/p>\n

That helped them after the restart as Rowett’s side began the stronger and turned the game in their favour.<\/p>\n

However, like with Oxford’s goal, Plymouth netted against the run of play when the U’s were on top.<\/p>\n

Rowett will be pleased with the second half performance and the response from his players after a poor 45 minutes, and his side could have won the game late on.<\/p>\n

Battling Performance<\/h3>\n

After an entertaining win over Premier League outfit, Brentford, in the FA Cup, Plymouth were looking for the new manager bounce in the league.<\/p>\n

Their form at Home Park has been impressive, with the Pilgrims suffering just two defeats despite their lowly league position.<\/p>\n

However, the U’s battled, threw bodies on the line and got stuck in to plenty of challenges. That was epitomised when Sam Long was forced off in the first half and Jordan Thorniley, who was the only like-for-like change, continued the trend despite his lack of minutes.<\/p>\n

Late Chances<\/h3>\n

Siriki Dembele replaced Przemyslaw Placheta with just over 20 minutes remaining and his directness caused the Pilgrims plenty of problems.<\/p>\n

But one thing that will frustrate Rowett will be that it took the best part of 90 minutes to force the Plymouth goalkeeper into a save, and it was Dembele at the double with that.<\/p>\n

The winger, who was deployed as a ten for the second game running, struck a fierce effort from the edge of the box one minute into stoppage time before forcing the goalkeeper into another save three minutes later with another snap-shot from distance.<\/p>\n

Despite the late chances, a draw was arguably a fair result and the point will mean more for Oxford than Plymouth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oxford United remain unbeaten in the league under Gary Rowett after the U’s drew 1-1 at bottom club, Plymouth. Will Vaulks opened his Oxford account on the stroke of half time but the hosts netted a leveller in the second half. Here are three talking points from the game. Oxford United Draw at Plymouth Tale […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":335,"featured_media":649225,"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":[8430,33,32],"tags":[519],"class_list":["post-650639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oxford-united","category-championship","category-league-football","tag-plymouth-argyle"],"modified_by":"Dale Ventham, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650639","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=650639"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":650641,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650639\/revisions\/650641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}