GOALKEEPER Billy Turley reckons Oxford United need to win nine of their last 11 games to reach the play-offs, starting at Forest Green tomorrow.

The veteran stopper, 35, who was outstanding in United’s 3-0 victory at Eastbourne on Tuesday, feels Chris Wilder’s team need to look at getting 80 points.

But nine wins from their last 11 is exactly what the U’s managed in the final seven weeks of last season, under former boss Darren Patterson, which shows it can be done.

“I said with 12 games to go we’ve got to look at 80 points and I stick by that,” Turley said.

“It would be nice to have nine clean sheets from the 11 games, but I think we’ve got to try for nine wins from the 11.

“It’s an 11-game season. If we win ten of them, we’ll be in. It’s a massive cliche, but every game’s a cup final for us.

“We can’t do anything about what happened in the first half of the season because we were nowhere near good enough, but the gaffer’s come in and we’ve had a great 12-game run or so.

“We’re producing championship form at the moment, with the amount of points we’ve got to the ratio of games.

“We’ve got to play the teams around us as well. Look at Stevenage, they think they’ve got a great chance of getting in the play-offs, they’ve played the same number of games as us and they’re seven points ahead – and we’ve got to play them . . . that’s going to be a massive six-pointer.”

Turley has experienced the satisfaction of promotion from the Conference before, with his former club Rushden, and that was done by coming from behind.

“When I was at Rushden, we were 14 points behind Yeovil and they had two games in hand, and I think that was at the end of February,” he said. “That was when only one went up as well.

“You never know what can happen in this league, especially when a lot of teams have got to play each other. We’ve just got to look after ourselves at the moment.”

Turley made two great saves to help United win in midweek, when his defence again stood firm.

“Four months ago we wouldn’t have won that game on Tuesday night,” he said.

“We’ve gone away to Crawley and won that game 1-0, and gone away to Cambridge and drawn 1-1, and now we’ve kept another clean sheet at Eastbourne. We’ve got that steel again.

“With the team we’ve got now, when we go away, the opposition have to come onto us and that plays into our hands a little bit.

“Forest Green will be a good game and I’m sure we’ll take a big following again.

“I watched in the Premier League West Brom taking 1,000 to an away game this week.

“On Tuesday, on a cold, horrible night, there must have been 500 of our fans at Eastbourne, it was magnificent.

“When we played at Forest Green a couple of years ago and Robert (Duffy) scored a hat-trick, I’ve never seen anything like it. It was like the Kassam at Forest Green and I think it will be similar on Saturday.”