OXFORD United's new owner Firoz Kassam will sit down with the club's directors this week to decide which players should be offered new or extended contracts.

The 43-year-old hotelier, who was given a very warm reception by supporters when he went on to the pitch before Saturday's home game against Bolton, believes great strides have been made off the field and has asked for the players to do their bit by keeping the club in the first division.

Kassam said: "My short-term ambitions are to keep the team in this division and to complete the stadium.

"There's still a lot of work to be done, but in two months we've come a long way".

Kassam admitted that the multiplex cinema was "probably the biggest obstacle in the way" but he fervently hoped it would receive backing, and believed that, if it isn't called in by the Department of the Environment, then other issues could be resolved within two months to enable work at Minchery Farm to start again.

"I'm not sure whether being the owner of a football club has yet sunk in yet," he told the media at a press conference. "When I sit back and realise the magnitude of what I've taken on I am a bit frightened about it, but I have had a lot of support from the fans. "I have learned very quickly how emotional it can be to be involved with a football club," said Kassam, Indian by origin but born in Tanzania.

He has lived in England for 25 years and brought his three young daughters, Shahnoor, 11, Feroza, 10, and Raisa, 6, to Saturday's match.

They seemed to love their father being in the limelight but Firoz was much more shy.

He said going on to the pitch was "not my scene" and when he realised what was involved he didn't get much sleep on Friday night.

The fans believe he is the club's saviour - even messiah - but Kassam was being more guarded.

"We've got to be careful that we are not misleading anybody," he was eager to point out, well aware of the problems caused by previous regimes.

When asked what he would do if plans for the cinema development were not approved, he stated: "I don't know."

He admitted privately that local solicitor Dave Bower, who has taken on some of the complicated legal matters of the club, free of charge and in his own time, had been "a great help in getting us to where we are now" and asking Bower to join the board might be considered. However, it's not thought Bower would want such a role unless he was going to be consulted about club affairs far more than were the other directors under Keith Cox.

Kassam would not come out with any brash predictions about Oxford getting into the Premiership and said simply: "My dream is to meet Arsenal at some stage and beat them.

"Arsenal were my club but my support for them has gone out of the window. I will have to stop the Arsenal players coming to the hotel!"

Story date: Monday 05 April

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.