Darrell Clarke praises rapidly-improving Cheltenham’s mentality after Oxford win

Darrell Clarke praised his rapidly-improving Cheltenham side’s mentality as they upset high-flying Oxford with a 2-0 League One home success.

Goals from Rob Street and Will Goodwin were enough to spoil Des Buckingham’s first match in charge of the promotion-chasing U’s, with both sides reduced to 10 men at the Completely-Suzuki Stadium.

“I’m proud of everyone today, even more so when we were down to 10 men for a period of time,” Clarke said.

“I thought we started very, very well and managed the game well. We created opportunities and yes, they’ve had one or two, but you’d expect that with them flying in the league.

“We’d certainly have been everyone’s away banker today and we are glad to prove the form wrong. I am proud of my players.”

Cheltenham started strongly and broke through in the 34th minute when Liam Sercombe’s corner was cleared to Street, who smashed a sweetly-struck effort through a crowd of bodies from 20 yards.

Goalscorer Street then saw red for catching Stephan Negru with an elbow in first-half stoppage-time.

On the dismissal, Clarke said: “I am asking our players to be aggressive, but we don’t want to go over the line.

“Streety has struck a great goal and I am not going to kill the lad’s confidence.

“We’ll look at it, but I am not here to criticise my players. I am asking them to be aggressive, fair but aggressive.

“Sometimes we might step over the mark and we have to be mindful of that. I don’t want to be critical of him because he was having a fantastic game up until then.”

Oxford forward Ruben Rodrigues was given his marching orders for dissent after a foul on Ben Williams after 68 minutes.

Cheltenham made sure of the points when George Lloyd set up Goodwin for his third of the season with 14 minutes remaining.

Buckingham, who replaced Liam Manning as Oxford head coach a week ago, said: “It’s a disappointing result, of course.

“They started better than we did in the first half and as the game went on, we grew into it and found ourselves again.

“I actually thought they scored against the run of play, while we were on top.

“They were a very direct side and a very physical side and I thought we stood up and matched that for most of the game.

“We made some changes at half-time and we started the second half extremely well and had several chances.

“A switch off and a long ball costs you a second and then a sending off kills the momentum.”