{"id":652162,"date":"2025-02-23T00:00:25","date_gmt":"2025-02-23T05:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?p=652162"},"modified":"2025-02-22T16:51:42","modified_gmt":"2025-02-22T21:51:42","slug":"three-talking-points-oxford-united-lose-west-brom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/02\/23\/three-talking-points-oxford-united-lose-west-brom\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Talking Points as Oxford United Lose at West Brom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oxford United<\/a> are now without a win in six after a 2-0<\/a> defeat on the road at promotion hopefuls, West Brom.<\/p>\n

The Baggies dominated the majority of the first half and took the lead during that spell, before adding a second at the end of the game.<\/p>\n

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

Oxford United Lose at West Brom<\/h2>\n

Multiple Changes to Lineup<\/h3>\n

Gary Rowett made five changes from the side that lost at home against Portsmouth last time out.<\/p>\n

Joe Bennett came in for the injured Greg Leigh, making his first appearance since August, while Alex Matos, Tyler Goodrham and Matt Phillips all came into midfield for Will Vaulks, Ruben Rodrigues and Siriki Dembele. There was also a first Oxford United start up top for Ole Romeny, in place of Mark Harris.<\/p>\n

No Shots on Target<\/h3>\n

Despite four attacking changes, Oxford ended their first half without an attempt on the Baggies goal. In fact, they ended the game with just five shots, none of which were on target.<\/p>\n

During that run of six games without a win, Rowett’s side have found the net just once, and that came during a 1-1 draw at home against Bristol City.<\/p>\n

While they looked fairly reliable at the back, there is a real struggle in attack with a lack of pace, directness or aggression in the final third.<\/p>\n

Bennett Blow<\/h3>\n

Having been sidelined since August and with Leigh going off injured against Portsmouth, there was a welcome to the starting lineup for Joe Bennett.<\/p>\n

And considering he hadn’t played for the majority of the season, the 34-year-old slotted into his left-back role with relative ease, despite being tested down the West Brom right side for much of the game.<\/p>\n

Admittedly, it would have been good to give him some minutes in recent games to get him up to match fitness, so losing him in stoppage time to another injury is a blow.<\/p>\n

Ciaron Brown looks the likely candidate to move to the left side of defence with captain Elliott Moore due back from his own injury, although Sam Long and Hidde ter Avest are also capable of covering the role.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oxford United are now without a win in six after a 2-0 defeat on the road at promotion hopefuls, West Brom. The Baggies dominated the majority of the first half and took the lead during that spell, before adding a second at the end of the game. Here are three talking points from the game. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":335,"featured_media":652025,"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":[8430,33,32,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-652162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oxford-united","category-championship","category-league-football","category-west-brom"],"modified_by":"Dale Ventham, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652162","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=652162"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":652164,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652162\/revisions\/652164"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}