{"id":652207,"date":"2025-03-01T00:00:41","date_gmt":"2025-03-01T05:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?p=652207"},"modified":"2025-02-25T06:42:20","modified_gmt":"2025-02-25T11:42:20","slug":"oxford-united-february-round-up-winless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/03\/01\/oxford-united-february-round-up-winless\/","title":{"rendered":"Oxford United February Round-Up: Manager of the Month Curse as U&#8217;s Fail to Win"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After winning the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/02\/09\/oxford-united-burnley-deadline-rowett-award\/\" target=\"_self\">Championship Manager of the Month for January<\/a>, it was a frustrating February for Gary Rowett&#8217;s Oxford United.<\/p>\n<p>The U&#8217;s scored just once and failed to win in any of their five league fixtures, while picking up a couple of injuries along the way.<\/p>\n<h2>Oxford United February Round-Up: Winless Run and Attacking Problems<\/h2>\n<h3>Steady Start<\/h3>\n<p>Oxford began the month with a point against <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/02\/02\/three-talking-points-oxford-united-draw-bristol-city\/\" target=\"_self\">Bristol City<\/a>. The Robins were reduced to ten men just 30 minutes into the game and Greg Leigh fired the U&#8217;s ahead after the restart, but former Oxford midfielder Mark Sykes netted an equaliser shortly after.<\/p>\n<p>It was a quiet <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/02\/09\/oxford-united-burnley-deadline-rowett-award\/\" target=\"_self\">deadline day<\/a> for Oxford as they saw two fringe players depart. First, Owen Dale joined Wigan on loan before Kyle Edwards joined Stevenage on a permanent basis after his contract expired last month.<\/p>\n<p>Back to on the pitch matters and Oxford suffered a first league defeat under Gary Rowett at <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/02\/05\/three-talking-points-oxford-united-lose-burnley\/\" target=\"_self\">Burnley<\/a>. An unfortunate Michal Helik own-goal was the difference between the two sides at Turf Moor.<\/p>\n<p>The U&#8217;s then played out a goalless draw on the road at <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/02\/12\/three-talking-points-oxford-united-draw-derby\/\" target=\"_self\">Derby<\/a>. It was a physical, scrappy and frustrating evening for both teams but Oxford will be happy to leave with a point and a clean sheet.<\/p>\n<p>Tom Bradshaw would miss the upcoming Portsmouth game through injury. The striker, who arrived during the January transfer window, has been ruled out for <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/articles\/cx2jzr1yg0eo\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">&#8220;a good few weeks.&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n<h3>Back-to-Back Defeats<\/h3>\n<p>Rowett&#8217;s side then lost for the first time at Grenoble Road with a 2-0 defeat against <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/02\/16\/three-talking-points-oxford-united-lose-portsmouth\/\" target=\"_self\">Portsmouth<\/a>. Goals at the beginning and the end of the second half sealed the win for John Mousinho&#8217;s side.<\/p>\n<p>The U&#8217;s ended the month with another 2-0 defeat, this time on the road at <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/02\/23\/three-talking-points-oxford-united-lose-west-brom\/\" target=\"_self\">West Brom<\/a>. The hosts took the lead during a dominant opening 30 minutes but added a second in stoppage time when Jamie Cumming came up for a corner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After winning the Championship Manager of the Month for January, it was a frustrating February for Gary Rowett&#8217;s Oxford United. The U&#8217;s scored just once and failed to win in any of their five league fixtures, while picking up a couple of injuries along the way. Oxford United February Round-Up: Winless Run and Attacking Problems [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":335,"featured_media":652013,"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":[],"class_list":["post-652207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oxford-united","category-championship","category-league-football"],"modified_by":"Dale Ventham, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652207","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=652207"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":652211,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652207\/revisions\/652211"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}