DES Buckingham was delighted to see a tactical tweak with Idris El Mizouni starting to bear fruit for Oxford United.

El Mizouni signed for the U’s from Ipswich Town during the summer, arriving with a reputation as a midfielder who plays box-to-box or in the holding role, following two seasons on loan at Leyton Orient.

So far at United, the 23-year-old has broadly featured as one of the two advanced midfielders in Buckingham’s preferred set-up.

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El Mizouni demonstrated in the victory at home to Stoke City that he has the ability and potential to provide what is required as one of Buckingham’s attacking midfielders.

He finished first-time from roughly the penalty spot, converting a low cross from Ruben Rodrigues three minutes into the second half.

It would prove to be the only goal of the game, and handed the U’s a third win from three home matches in Sky Bet Championship so far this season.

Buckingham said of El Mizouni: “He’s played a lot of his career as a deeper midfielder, so he played the last two seasons as a six or a defensive midfield player.

“We’ve brought him here and sold him the higher role as either an eight or a 10. It was one thing that really attracted him to coming here.

“The one thing he doesn’t have in his background is the assists or goalscoring, and that’s one thing that he’s been working so hard on since he’s come in the building, to try and find those moments, and recognise them and capitalise on them, so for him to arrive on the end of that move gives him a good bit of confidence to show that he can.

“It’ll put him and us in a better space going forward.”

El Mizouni had come into the starting line-up in place of Rodrigues, who joined the action during first half stoppage time after an injury to Cameron Brannagan.

Buckingham said: “There was a bit of a trade-off with Idris starting instead of Ruben. We know the differences that they give.

“We just felt with Idris we’d be able to get a little bit more control and build-up in the first half, and was a bit of a reflection on Preston.

“It was more us trying to find Ruben than us involving the players to try and get there. We just felt that if we played Idris, we’d be able to get more control of the game, with an idea of bringing Ruben on to impact the game.

“I didn’t quite expect it to work out quite as well as it did there, but he was ready to come on and make the impact that he did, and it shows how important he is to us.”