LIAM Manning was delighted to see hard work at the training ground come to fruition after watching his Oxford United side thrash Queens Park Rangers 5-0.

The U’s outclassed their higher division opponents, particularly in a second half which saw four of the five goals scored.

For head coach Manning, it was a case of joy seeing the graft in training produce results on the pitch.

He said: “I have to give credit to the staff and the players, we’ve done a huge amount of work. There’s so much work that goes on at the training ground, whether it be on the pitch, video work, individual meetings or unit meetings.

“What happens today is not just off the cuff, it’s a lot of hard graft.

“I thought Sparky [Mark Harris] was terrific today in terms of setting the tone out of possession, but you can also play into his feet, he runs the depth and he competes with long ones.

“I could go through the whole team to be fair, there was a lot of positive individual performances, as well as collectively.”

Manning added: “If you break the game down, in the first 20 or 25 minutes, we found it quite difficult in the build-up and you could feel it around the place.

“It was a little bit nervy and there’s some new stuff for the fans to see in terms of how we want the team to play.

“The players are working really hard to solve the problems and when you get it right, you then get what we saw from 35 or 40 minutes onwards.

“It’s a work in progress and it’s not going to be perfect straight away but there was a huge number of positives to take, and the lads should take confidence from it into next week.”