{"id":654173,"date":"2025-05-01T00:00:19","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T04:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?p=654173"},"modified":"2025-04-27T03:15:13","modified_gmt":"2025-04-27T07:15:13","slug":"oxford-united-april-championship-status-secured","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/05\/01\/oxford-united-april-championship-status-secured\/","title":{"rendered":"Oxford United April Round-Up: Championship Status Secured"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It was a mixed bags of results for <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/04\/27\/three-talking-points-oxford-united-win-sunderland\/\" target=\"_self\">Oxford United<\/a> over the last month but it ended with the U&#8217;s securing their second tier status.<\/p>\n<h2>Oxford United April Round-Up<\/h2>\n<h3>Mixed Results<\/h3>\n<p>Oxford began the month with an impressive victory over league leaders, <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/04\/06\/three-talking-points-oxford-united-win-sheffield-united\/\" target=\"_self\">Sheffield United<\/a>. Siriki Dembele netted the only goal of the game before the break, with the U&#8217;s throwing their bodies on the line defensively for much of the second half.<\/p>\n<p>However, Gary Rowett&#8217;s side were brought back down to earth with a frustrating 3-1 defeat at home against <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/04\/10\/three-talking-points-oxford-united-lose-against-qpr\/\" target=\"_self\">QPR<\/a>. In what was arguably one of the worst first half performances this season, the U&#8217;s headed into the break two goals down. Stan Mills for reduce the deficit but the visitors added a third late on. The U&#8217;s also lost Ciaron Brown and Hidde ter Avest to injury.<\/p>\n<p>The U&#8217;s bounced back from that disappointing defeat against QPR with a 1-0 win on the road at <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/04\/13\/three-talking-points-oxford-united-win-sheffield-wednesday\/\" target=\"_self\">Sheffield Wednesday<\/a>. Sam Long, who was one of six changes, headed home from another Will Vaulks long throw with just over ten minutes remaining.<\/p>\n<p>The pattern continued with Oxford then following a win up with a defeat. This time it came against league leaders <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/04\/19\/three-talking-points-oxford-united-lose-leeds\/\" target=\"_self\">Leeds<\/a> but it was a battling display at Grenoble Road, losing narrowly.<\/p>\n<p>Oxford went into their relegation six pointer away at <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/04\/22\/three-talking-points-oxford-united-draw-cardiff\/\" target=\"_self\">Cardiff<\/a> and rescued a vital point. Results elsewhere all went against the U&#8217;s and the Welsh side and it looked worse when the hosts took the lead, but a Cameron Brannagan free kick from 35 yards earned a draw.<\/p>\n<p>The U&#8217;s ended the month by ensuring Championship football for another season. Goals in each half from Ben Nelson and Michal Helik secured a 2-0 win over playoff-heading Sunderland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was a mixed bags of results for Oxford United over the last month but it ended with the U&#8217;s securing their second tier status. Oxford United April Round-Up Mixed Results Oxford began the month with an impressive victory over league leaders, Sheffield United. Siriki Dembele netted the only goal of the game before the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":335,"featured_media":654001,"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-654173","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\/654173","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=654173"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":654174,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654173\/revisions\/654174"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}