The start of a crucial week at Oxford United has appeared to pass successfully. The U’s played out an in-house match at the Kassam Stadium yesterday afternoon before their latest round of coronavirus testing came back negative.
After two friendly matches earlier this month, this game was the start of their final preparations for the League One playoff match against Portsmouth this Friday.
As a result, U’s boss Karl Robinson was pleased with what he saw. Speaking to the Oxford Mail, he said: “We’ve still got five days to really tighten it up, but as a whole, I thought it was a really good exercise.
“They looked committed, no one shirked a tackle, so it was as close as you’re going to get. There’s obviously elements of playing in an empty stadium which are different for us.
“I still think there’s more to come and it’s our job to get that out. You can see how serious we are here.
“We’ve got three more big days working on our shape and then it’s a case of looking forward to the challenge.
“We’ve just got a little bit more work to do behind closed doors and to carry out one or two little things we think we need to do to hone in on that.”
As with the latest round or coronavirus testing, anyone that would have received a positive result would have missed the match at Portsmouth.
An earlier round came back with two individuals that tested positive, but since then, all results have been clear. There is one more round of testing before Friday’s match.
Robinson, who was relieved with the results, said: “They were nervous with the last lot, but Amy (Cranston) dropped me a text late on Saturday night to say the latest batch of tests all came back negative, which was great news for us all.
“We’re in a weird little bubble at the moment because we’ve just been seeing each other.”
