Chris Wilder is urging Oxford United to produce more of the same against Stockport tomorrow.

But the U’s must not forget what has helped them climb the table so rapidly – namely plenty of graft to go with their confident play.

“We’re newcomers to this league, and there’s no way we can ever get carried away,” Wilder said.

“If we start doing that and think that we just have to turn up, then we’re really in trouble.

“The belief and the confidence has built up from really good performances this season.

“But we keep telling the players that the reason we keep producing these performances is that we’ve worked harder than the opposition, competed better than them, and we’ve had a bigger desire to go and win games.

“And we’ll need to show all those attributes to win.

“The players are playing well, they’re in form – we’ve seen that – we need to keep those standards high. And if we do that, we give ourselves a good opportunity of going and winning the game.”

Mark Creighton, who came in for Jake Wright at Hereford last week, and hardly put a foot wrong, will again line up alongside Harry Wor-ley in central defence.

The U’s will create a bit of history if they manage another shut-out tomorrow, because if they do, it will be their fifth successive clean sheet in the league.

Although they did manage that in the Conference at the end of last season, the last time United had five straight clean sheets in the Football League was when Arthur Turner was manager and England hadn’t yet won the World Cup.

It was from December 1963-January 1964 in the season when Oxford United became the first Fourth division club to reach the FA Cup quarter-finals.

Another part of Oxford’s history is Paul Simpson, the Stockport County manager.

An exciting, attacking winger, and a free-kick specialist, ‘Simmo’ made 168 appearances for the Yell-ows, scoring 50 goals and making countless others from 1988-1992.

He has been a manager since 2003, taking charge at Stockport in July.

His son Jake is also a professional footballer at Stockport.

So did Simpson ever think, when he was at the Manor Ground, that he would go into management?

“Not at all. When I was at Oxford I had just started doing my preliminary coaching badges and did my preliminary physio badge,” he said.

“I never thought I would go into football management, though it was always in my mind to coach . . . I was thinking more then of going into Academy coaching.

“But the opportunity came up at Rochdale, and then Carlisle, and obviously there’s been Preston and Shrewsbury and now Stockport, and I thoroughly enjoy it.”

Looking at tomorrow’s clash, he said: “I know we’re going into a really difficult game against Oxford.

“I watched them last season and I’ve had a couple of reports on them this season which indicate the biggest things are that they are playing with a lot of goals at the moment, and that there are goals coming from midfield as well as up front.

“I came there with Carlisle and I’m looking forward to coming back to Oxford. It’s a fantastic stadium, one of the best in our league, and the fans were always fantastic to me.”