Ian Evatt explained he made four changes to freshen up his Bolton Wanderers side mentally from their recent comeback victories as he gave his verdict on how they need to protect goalkeeper James Trafford better when coming for crosses.
The visitors took the lead in the first half when Djavan Anderson finished from close range after Wanderers failed to clear. Manchester City loanee Trafford stopped it being two with a point blank save from Elliott Moore's header.
Josh Sheehan nearly levelled before the break but Simon Eastwood's smart reflexes kept him out. After the interval, Ciaron Brown added the visitors' second to put them in the driving seat.
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But Wanderers were handed hope when Dion Charles slotted home to reduce the deficit. However, that proved to be short lived as Steve Seddon got the last touch from a corner to score Oxford's third and which ultimately sealed three points for the visitors with a 3-1 scoreline.
Charles went very close to equalising for Wanderers, nearly connecting with Aaron Morley's cross moments after he halved the deficit. It was not long however, before Seddon scored from the corner to restore the visitors' two-goal advantage.
Wanderers have recently claimed six points from their last two games, both of which have been comebacks against Accrington Stanley and Burton Albion. Evatt made the changes he did for the encounter to freshen his team up mentally as well as physically.
Oxford's third goal came from a corner as players crowded around Trafford for Seddon to get the crucial touch. Evatt is not sure if it was a foul, but believes his players must protect the goalkeeper better when those situations play out in the future.
He said: “Physically it takes energy to make comebacks, but more mentally fatigued because we’ve had to put a lot into it to win those two games. We haven’t won them on our quality, we’ve won them on character, energy and belief really.
“We needed to make changes against, in my opinion, the most energetic team in the league, and if you don’t match their energy, you’re in trouble. If you don’t do that and we don’t show the belief and bravery in possession that we can, then you’re in a spot of bother.
“They are full man for man press. They left two v two at the back, they went man for man, they pushed right on us and rather than us being brave and backing ourselves to find solutions, we ended up playing too long.
“What we did do is play long into two five foot eight, five foot nine strikers against two six foot four, six foot five centre-backs, especially first half, and we then lost the first contacts which is inevitable if we’re playing that type of football and then we lost the seconds as well because the team was a bit disjointed.
“We were showing for the ball in midfield because particularly Kieran and Josh are creative players, that’s not their game to run and win second balls. If we’re going to play those, we need to be super brave in possession and back their quality but we didn’t do that.
“Second half, we conceded a goal far too early so we lacked the time to gather a head of steam up and everything we spoke about at half-time. Then we start to rally and get into it and we get a good goal, a well worked one, and it looks like it’s on again, but it wasn’t to be.
“It was another really poor goal to concede, whether it’s a foul or not on Traff I don’t know, but what I will say is we have to protect him better. We can’t allow bodies around him.
“We have to be strong, we have to be physical and we have to clear the area for him to come and take the ball. If you look at their keeper, he was coming and claiming things really comfortably with no pressure because they did a really good job of protecting him. I think we need to protect Traff better.”
Referee Ollie Yates' performance came under the spotlight, with the home faithful questioning some of his decisions on the day. A total of seven yellow cards were handed out, five of which were for Oxford.
Evatt spoke only very briefly on Yates' showing in the middle. But it was clear that he felt the performance could have been better.
He said: “I’d rather not speak about referees, but for me, that performance wasn’t good enough.”
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