The exodus has continued at The Kassam Stadium, with club captain Martin Thomas agreeing a settlement to leave Oxford United.

It means that, in the space of just a few weeks, seven of the club's biggest wage-earners - Paul Tait, Darren Patterson, Jon Richardson, Phil Gray, Robert Quinn, Richard Knight and Thomas -- have moved on, saving the third division club around £900,000. Like Quinn and Knight, former Swansea and Brighton midfielder Thomas still had one year to run on his current deal, but yesterday he accepted an offer put to him by the club to terminate his contract.

"Good luck to all the players who have gone," said manager Ian Atkins. "No-one has been forcibly pushed out, but they have accepted that we have under-achieved and that the wage bill needed to be cut." Thomas, a tough-tackling midfielder, was signed by former manager Mark Wright last summer on a free transfer from Brighton and was immediately installed as skipper.

He played in United's opening 12 matches, but an ankle injury, which he had while he was at Brighton, began plaguing him again.

Although he played in Wright's final match in charge, at Leyton Orient in November, Thomas did not start a single game under Atkins, who brought in Andy Crosby, also from Brighton, and installed him as captain.

The 27-year-old's departure has come as no surprise. Indeed, rumours that he might be leaving surfaced when Nick Cusack, manager of his former club Swansea, said he would like to take him back to The Vetch Field.

Thomas showed an interest in such a transfer, but Swansea have made no further move for him.

Atkins admitted: "I am disappointed in a lot of ways, because I have put certain questions to the players and there's not one of them who has turned around and said 'I'll prove you wrong'. To me, there's no point in keeping players like that."

Atkins admits to being baffled by the performances of his team towards the end of the season, and says that they have contributed to the sweeping changes. "We worked really hard in training throughout, but from January onwards, I honestly didn't know what I was going to get from the players out on the pitch," he said.

"That's the first time in my managerial career that it has happened to me, and it was not nice.

"When players are consistently not performing in the way they should, that starts to reflect badly on me and I am not happy with that."

Atkins intends travelling up to the PFA headquarters in Manchester to scan the final list of players being released and get a head-start, before it's sent out to other clubs.

"I reckon we need around eight players in," he said.