Oxford United skipper Adam Murray is waiting anxiously on the results of a scan on his injured foot – and hoping he doesn’t need surgery.

If he does, it could mean him missing a chunk of pre-season and even force him to be sidelined for the start of next season.

But the midfielder was staying positive about it, saying he simply wants to get the problem sorted.

The injury affected the team’s main playmaker for the majority of the last two months of this season, and it is a testament to him that he managed to keep his consistency levels high, even when he was clearly in some discomfort.

As well as linking up superbly at times with striker James Constable, Murray hit brilliant set-piece goals in the U’s away wins at Eastbourne and Woking, in the 3-3 draw at Forest Green and in United’s 2-1 win over Lewes at the Kassam Stadium to finish as the side’s second top scorer.

He ended the season on seven goals, still way behind Constable, however, with six of them coming in the last three months of the season.

So it would be a major blow for manager Chris Wilder if any surgery did mean him having to miss the first couple of weeks of the 2009-2010 campaign.

Before heading off for the X-ray, Murray said: “I’ve got to go for the scan and am just hoping there’s not too much damage.

“I’m not really looking forward to it, to be honest, because I don’t think it will be good news.

“But I’ve got eight weeks to get it right now and I’ve got to make sure I do that.”

Explaining exactly where the problem lies, he said: “It’s the bottom of my foot. I tore the ligament there.

“To be fair, the last few weeks was ‘am I going to play, am I not going to play?’ all the time, but I wanted to keep doing everything in my power while we still had a chance of making the play-offs.

“I’ve just got to see how much more it’s torn than it was three months ago.

“We’ll just see how that goes. I’ve got a piece of bone floating around in there as well!”

He added: “I think it might need an operation just to clean it up, but as long as it’s sorted come the start of the season, or shortly after, I’ll be happy.”