MICKEY Lewis showed he had the Midas Touch again last night with a golden double substitution which helped bring Oxford United a 1-1 draw at Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup third round.

Paul Powell and Jamie Cook transformed the team when they came on in the second half, and Powell struck a brilliant equaliser 15 minutes from time to bring United a replay at the Manor Ground on Tuesday, December 15.

The never-say-die U's, who have now been behind in four FA Cup games this season and come back each time, stretched their amazing unbeaten run under Lewis to 11 games.

And Oxford's chief coach believes his team are capable of finishing first division Forest off in the replay.

"We definitely fancy our chances at the Manor," Lewis said. "I thought we deserved a draw in the end. We did defend well. We had to, because we gave the ball away too much, so we were under constant pressure.

"But we've always got a good chance at home

"Funnily enough, though, I don't think we played well at all tonight.

"Until the goal, on 40 minutes, we still looked solid. We did start to pass the ball better in the second half, showed a bit more patience. In the first half, we just slipped back into not wanting the ball, not making it quick enough.

"That was the reason we put Powell and Cook on, I felt we needed more pace."

Neil McGowan said: "We had to defend for long spells, but we defended better tonight than we have done in previous games because Paul Lundin wasn't coming and taking as many crosses as he normally does.

"When you're up against players from a higher division you're always going to have opponents who are better on the ball than you're used to, but we coped well with that and in the end we got the result we deserved.

Story date: Saturday 11 December

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