{"id":665665,"date":"2026-02-26T02:00:55","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T07:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?p=665665"},"modified":"2026-02-25T18:00:28","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T23:00:28","slug":"three-talking-points-oxford-united-lose-at-stoke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2026\/02\/26\/three-talking-points-oxford-united-lose-at-stoke\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Talking Points as Oxford United Lose at Stoke"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oxford United<\/a> suffered another major blow to their survival hopes with a 2-1 defeat on the road at Stoke.<\/p>\n

The Potters took the lead but Oxford ended their four-game streak without scoring just before the break. However, the hosts added a second after the restart and saw the game out.<\/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 Travel to Stoke<\/a><\/p>\n

Oxford United Lose at Stoke<\/h2>\n

Injury Rotations<\/h3>\n

There were surprise inclusions in the squad for Hidde ter Avest and Nik Prelec, with the latter having seen his loan spell switched to a permanent deal earlier in the week.<\/p>\n

However, midfield duo Jamie Donley and Jamie McDonnell both missed the game, leaving Matt Bloomfield short of players in that area of the pitch, with the head coach confirming after the match that Brian De Keersmaecker could also miss the rest of the campaign.<\/p>\n

Susceptible to Counter Attacks<\/h3>\n

Stoke managed to hit Oxford on the counter early doors and despite their dominance of possession, particularly in the first half, the quick break looked their most likely route to an opening goal.<\/p>\n

And that’s exactly what happened when with just ten minutes remaining of the first half, the Potters launched another counter with the Oxford backline unorganised before slotting home the opening goal.<\/p>\n

It’s a worrying trend that the U’s look susceptible to another form of conceding goals when they’ve struggled at the other end of the pitch.<\/p>\n

Lack of Pressure<\/h3>\n

And that continued in this game, despite scoring for the first time in five games in all competitions.<\/p>\n

However, after the restart with the scores level, the U’s just failed to exert any pressure on the opponents. They had slightly more of the ball than in the first half but did nothing with it.<\/p>\n

Bloomfield made use of all five substitutes, but only Aidomo Emakhu and Prelec seemed to have any impact, although it was still fairly minimal.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Featured image courtesy of SmartFrame\/News Image\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oxford United suffered another major blow to their survival hopes with a 2-1 defeat on the road at Stoke. The Potters took the lead but Oxford ended their four-game streak without scoring just before the break. However, the hosts added a second after the restart and saw the game out. Here are three talking points […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":335,"featured_media":665585,"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":[8430,33,32,30,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-665665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oxford-united","category-championship","category-league-football","category-news","category-stoke"],"modified_by":"Dale Ventham, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665665","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=665665"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":665668,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665665\/revisions\/665668"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}