GARY Rowett wants Oxford United to take the next step in their Sky Bet Championship adventure and start challenging in the games against the division’s elite sides.
The U’s saw their nine-match league unbeaten start under Rowett come to an end with a 1-0 defeat at Burnley.
An own goal from Michal Helik, who diverted a Josh Cullen cross inside his near post, was the difference between the two teams at Turf Moor.
United head coach Rowett said: “I couldn’t stand here and say we deserved something out of the game. I think we had moments in the game.
“What we’ve got to try and do at places like this is start to make those moments a little bit longer and a little bit bigger, but I thought we carried a threat.
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“The likes of Shemmy [Przemyslaw Placheta] on the turnover, I thought we got in some good positions without creating as much as we’d like.
“After a good start, they then settled into their game. You can clearly see that they’re a very good side, which is why they’re going to be competing for the top two positions.
“Sometimes when you’re playing against a good side, they stretch you in the way that they do, it makes it very difficult to do anything other than try to be compact.
“That takes a little bit away from your ability to attack for long periods. I thought as the game went on, certainly in the second half, there were moments where we started to build a little bit more into the game and started to show a little bit more belief.
“In the last 15 minutes, we got into some reasonably good areas. We had a few moments where we pinned them back in and they had to defend it, but I couldn’t stand here and say we deserved something out of the game.”
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Rowett added: “The goal was a frustrating moment. It ran off us down that inside channel. They were very good at exploiting that left-hand side.
“It’s quite difficult. If you’re Shemmy, sometimes we want him to be our highest attacking player at times and what a lot of teams have started to do is run him deeper and make him work even harder.
“They got down that side and overloaded Longy [Sam Long] and utilised the space. It was a little bit of fortune for the deflection.
“They had a couple of moments before that when maybe they’ll feel they should’ve scored.
“After that, we limited them to very few clear-cut chances. When you look at the trajectory of our team and where our team has come from, out of League One and trying to compete in this division to I think more than competing in this division and looking like the next step for us is seeing if we can compete a little bit better in those types of games, which I think is a real positive.”
