Oxford United's first-team coach Mickey Lewis said his team "have to be stronger" after they let slip a glorious winning position last night to go crashing out of the Worthington Cup, wites Jon Murray.

They looked set to claim a notable first division scalp as Jon Shepheard scored his first goal for the club to put them two up on aggregate against Wolves.

But it all went pear-shaped at the start of the second half at the Manor, as the U's failed to cut out a succession of crosses and Colin Lee's injury-hit side struck three goals in 19 minutes to win 3-1 on the night and go through to the second round on a 3-2 aggregate.

And this despite having defender Joleon Lescott sent off on the hour.

"We've got to be stronger and we've got to defend better," Lewis said afterwards. "Two goals were from crosses and our lads haven't got up, they were two free headers. We let them cross it too easily and we got punished."

Adam Proudlock, a 19-year-old striker from Shropshire, grabbed Wolves' third and match-winning goal to complete a fairytale night for him after he was dramatically recalled from a loan spell with Scottish club Clyde.

But from United's viewpoint, his was a bad goal to concede.

"With the third goal he took it well because there were three centre halves back there when the lad played it through 60 yards, and we've got to deal with that kind of ball much better.

"At the end of the day, elementary mistakes cost us," said Lewis. "If we'd kept it at 1-0 for ten or 15 minutes of the second half that would probably have been the end of the game. "It was a point we made at half-time. We had to get closer on crosses and we had to stop people crossing the ball because 75 per cent of goals come from crosses.

"The third goal was a very, very poor goal to concede. We had three against one at the back and we went to sleep because they had ten men. We didn't defend as well as we should have done.

But there's a lot of good points to come out of the game. Denis was watching from the stand and he made that point as well.

"We had 11 players against ten but we didn't use that extra man well enough. We got a bit of a panic on when it was 3-1 but there were still 20 minutes to go.

"We have to learn from the bad things and we have to take the good things and take it into the league.

"In the first half, we pushed people on and gave them a lot of problems.

"But we've got a lot of young players and they've got to learn much quicker than they are."