{"id":660024,"date":"2025-09-28T00:00:59","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T04:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?p=660024"},"modified":"2025-09-27T13:44:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T17:44:14","slug":"three-talking-points-oxford-united-lose-sheffield-united","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/09\/28\/three-talking-points-oxford-united-lose-sheffield-united\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Talking Points as Oxford United Lose Against Sheffield United"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oxford United<\/a> saw their unbeaten run come to an end with a narrow defeat at home against Sheffield United.<\/p>\n

The U’s will be pleased with large parts of the play but were unable to grind out a result at Grenoble Road.<\/p>\n

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

Read More<\/strong>: Team News, Form and Predicted Line-Up as Oxford United Welcome Sheffield United\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Oxford United Lose Against Sheffield United<\/h2>\n

Unchanged Line-Up<\/h3>\n

After a convincing display and first three points of the season last time out against Bristol City, it was little surprise to see Gary Rowett name and unchanged side for the visit or the Blades.<\/p>\n

Jamie Cumming was the goalkeeper behind a back four of Brodie Spencer, Michal Helik, Sam Long and Jack Currie.<\/p>\n

Brian De Keersmaecker and captain Cameron Brannagan sat as the two in midfield behind Przemyslaw Placheta, Nik Prelec and Filip Krastev, with Will Lankshear in attack.<\/p>\n

For the most part, it was a good display but having lost the game, Rowett may make changes for the trip to QPR on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

Tale of Two Halves<\/h3>\n

Oxford started the game on the front front and the front four looked lively throughout. While they weren’t as effective in the final third, the attacking midfield trio caused plenty of problems for the Blades backline, particularly the wingers.<\/p>\n

De Keersmaecker and Brannagan also controlled large spells in the middle of the park but despite their first half dominance, they were unable to find the back of the net and were limited to few clear cut chances.<\/p>\n

However, after the restart, Sheffield United boss Chris Wilder clearly got a message across to his players and the U’s looked a shell of the side compared to the opening 45 minutes.<\/p>\n

The Blades were by far the better side and once they took the lead on 64 minutes, they sat deep and stopped Oxford from getting in behind.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, if the U’s had taken the lead when they were in control of the game, it could have been a different outcome on the day.<\/p>\n

Wrong Subs, Wrong Time<\/h3>\n

The second half display wasn’t helped by the changes that Rowett made, which highlighted a slight lack of depth with options coming off the bench.<\/p>\n

While Lankshear arguably had his worst display in an Oxford shirt, but that was down to the experience of Ben Mee, Mark Harris barely got a sniff after replacing him, although Stan Mills did have a go after he replaced Placheta.<\/p>\n

Siriki Dembele and Will Vaulks also came on but with Prelec and Krastev departing, the U’s lost that creative spark in the final third.<\/p>\n

In hindsight, Rowett could have tweaked the team before Sheffield United took the lead and it could have been a different outcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oxford United saw their unbeaten run come to an end with a narrow defeat at home against Sheffield United. The U’s will be pleased with large parts of the play but were unable to grind out a result at Grenoble Road. Here are three talking points from the game. Read More: Team News, Form and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":335,"featured_media":660027,"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":[8430,33,32,3839],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-660024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oxford-united","category-championship","category-league-football","category-sheffield-united"],"modified_by":"Dale Ventham, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660024","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=660024"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":660025,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660024\/revisions\/660025"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}