Wilder's relief at first victory

The U’s hammered Morecambe 4-0 with James Constable smashing a hat-trick, after a stunning long-range strike from Simon Heslop.

It was Oxford’s first npower League Two win of the campaign, after three draws from their previous four games, and their first Football League victory since 2006.

“It is a relief,” said the U’s boss. “It’s good to get that first win under our belt.

“We have played well on numerous occasions this season and not got the results. But it’s no good me or others continually saying that, people look at the league table.

“We had to marry the performances with the results and I think we’ve done that today.

“The performance from last week to this week was like chalk and cheese. We were bang at it today.

“There was a bit of pressure on us because nobody likes to not win in the first month of the season, especially for a newly-promoted club that everyone says has got momentum.

“There have been questions asked of our forwards and ‘can Constable cut it in this league?’ “I think with his hat-trick today, his goals against Bristol Rovers and the amount he got last season, that he’s a goalscorer.”

United were excellent throughout. They had just one spell early in the second half when they didn’t know whether to go forward and try for more goals or – remembering their home defeat at Bury last month when they were hit on the break – hang onto what they had.

But Ryan Clarke made a brilliant double save and then when Morecambe had their left back Laurence Wilson sent off, United moved up a gear again for Constable to bang in two more.

“We were back to what we’re good at,” Wilder said. “There was a little bit of edginess in our play at the start of the second half – sometimes getting over the finishing line, when you haven’t won for a month, can be the hardest part.

“Ryan made a great save at an important time for us. I thought we kicked on after that.

“So hopefully that will give us a great amount of confidence to go into the next set of games.”