Oxford boss Des Buckingham hails Tyler Goodrham’s wonder strike

Oxford boss Des Buckingham saluted 21-year-old winger Tyler Goodrham after his spectacular strike helped the Championship new boys to a 3-1 win over Preston 3-1 at the Kassam Stadium.

Emil Riis gave Preston a third-minute lead, but Oxford levelled in the 20th minute when Mark Harris scored for the fourth league game in succession.

Goodrham’s stunning goal put United in front and after visiting defender Liam Lindsay was sent off for a second yellow card, Greg Leigh bagged a third Us goal, netting from close range from Ciaran Brown’s assist.

Buckingham said: “I was right behind Tyler’s strike – it was a wonderful finish.

“Seeing him cutting in on the right-hand side, it’s normally him doing that on the opposite side and curling it in with his right foot.

“That’s the reason we signed Tyler to a long-term contract at this club, he’s thriving at the moment in the Championship and long may that continue.

“It’s difficult when the opposition have a new manager in to plan what they might do, and they set up differently to what we thought they would.

“It took us a little while to get to grips with that and in the first 10-15 minutes they had the better of the game because of that.

“We managed to get he message on and made some changes which I think balanced it up, which got us back into the game.

“We got the goal and a couple of things at half time we changed which really helped us in the second half.

“I think it’s a great start for us in this league. We were coming into the unknown, so to get six points from the first 12 – if you’d offered that to us before the season started with the amount of unknowns and the changes we’ve had in our squad we’d certainly have taken that.”

It was a first defeat for Preston’s new manager Paul Heckingbottom, who felt his men should have been ahead at the break.

He said: “Coming in 1-1 at half time it was hard to understand how we were level but we had been wasteful at one end and the one thing we really got wrong we got punished for. We were upset about that.

“I thought we started the second half well on the front foot and pressing to get the ball back again then their second goal is a killer again for us.

“It’s just a quick free kick. We had bodies back and from Oxford’s point of view yes, they’ll be saying that it’s an unbelievable finish from 25 yards but for us it’s very sloppy and all of a sudden we were 2-1 down and didn’t know what’s happened.

“So it was very frustrating for us and it was a game I felt we should have won.”