Oxford boss Des Buckingham believes their narrow 1-0 lead is a “good advantage” to take to London Road for the second leg of their League One play-off against Peterborough.
U’s captain Elliott Moore headed the only goal of the first leg eight minutes into the second half, nodding in from three yards after Cameron Brannagan headed Josh Murphy’s corner back from beyond the far post.
Buckingham, who injured his left leg jumping to celebrate the goal, said: “It’s only a slim advantage but I’m happy with what I’ve seen tonight.
“The second half, we did a few things we need to tidy up on as we head for the second leg.
“Overall, it’s a good advantage to take to theirs because they’re a very good team.
“Wednesday will be very tough for us but if we take in the energy levels and the understanding of what we’re trying to do into that game in the way I’ve seen tonight, I’ll be very happy.
“We had to start the first half strongly because the sun was very low into the eyes of our back line and keeper, so the more we could keep it in their half the better until the sun set.
“We want to play exciting football and get at teams. We don’t want to come into these games trying not to lose.
“I’m really pleased for Elliott Moore to get the man of the match because, remember, he wasn’t able to play three games ago.
“The atmosphere here tonight will stay with me for the rest of my life.
“And for the second leg on Wednesday we won’t be sitting back – we will go to try to win the game, and see how it progresses.”
Peterborough boss Darren Ferguson says he feels his fans can help to produce a special night for the second leg.
Ferguson said: “It was tight. I don’t think it was ever going to be decided tonight, we take it to Wednesday.
“Obviously we’re a goal down, I think it’ll be an exciting game, we’ll have a great atmosphere at home and hopefully we can get the job done.
“These semi-finals are always quite frenetic, you almost want to make it a bit dull, especially away from home.
“They started quite strong but we didn’t help ourselves. Out of possession I thought we looked fairly solid, in possession up until they scored we weren’t good enough.
“Conceding from set pieces has probably been our Achilles heel and, when the season ends whenever that is and hopefully with promotion, I will look back and say that there were certain things where we were nowhere near good enough.
“The smallest player on the pitch has won the header and one of our players has let him run off him.
“It needs to be perfect in these games and to lose a game to that goal is just not good enough.
“But once we got a pattern we were OK and we controlled the last part of the game, we were just unlucky that we didn’t get an equaliser.”
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