Oxford United are eager to bounce straight back at Macclesfield tomorrow after what they felt was a harsh home defeat to Aldershot.

A brilliantly-finished goal by Marvin Morgan brought The Shots – United’s bogey team – a 1-0 win.

But the U’s did enough in the first half to have deserved a goal.

And manager Chris Wilder has discovered, from watching replays, that James Constable was clearly ONSIDE when the linesman flagged early in the match to deny him, with the striker in a glorious position to score.

Wilder feels Oxford might have had many more points than the 14 they’ve gleaned.

“I think we’ve been unfortunate because there’s been missed opportunities, really good goalkeeping displays in a few of the games, dubious decisions, as on Saturday where Beano after three minutes is clearly onside – I’ve seen the replays,” he said.

“But we’ve got to look a bit beyond that and make sure we keep doing the right things, and I think we are doing the right things.

“Last weekend we were probably the most disappointed we’ve been all season because we all got frustrated, and it was difficult to break them down.

“And the deeper they went, that suited their two centre halves, and we didn’t move the ball quick enough.

“There were certain things we could have done better, we know that. But, as we’ve seen at Wembley on Tuesday night, at the highest level – international level – it’s dificult to break down the oppostion.”

Macclesfield have two points fewer than Oxford.

Tyrone Barnett and Hamza Ben-cherif are joint top scorers with three goals, and Barnett is near the top of the League Two list in terms of shots this season. He has hit 30.

Bencherif, who won seven caps for Algeria Under 21s, began his career at Nottingham Forest yet never made a first-team appearance.

But he did find the net in his 12 games on loan at Lincoln.

And it was at Lincoln last Sat-urday that he bagged his third of this campaign, though Macclesfield lost the game 2-1.

Wilder said: “I went to watch Macclesfield against Crewe, and they matched Crewe for big parts of the game and drew with them.

“They also beat a Northampton team, who a week before had gone to Anfield and beat Liverpool.

“We were disappointed to lose last Saturday because I thought in the first half we were excellent.

“We’ve got to learn from it. When Aldershot went down to ten men, I expected us to move the ball better, for the movement to be better. The longer the game went on, the more frustrated and anxious we got.

“All credit to them, they got the goal and sat back, and killed the game. I think their right back went down about four times with head injuries, so they did a professional job on us.

“The boy scored an unbelievable goal, that maybe he won’t score again this season, which came from an individual mistake.

“We want to show a reaction from the defeat last week and get ourselves back on track. We’re not happy with the defeat we had at home, but we’re looking to get a win that would stick us back in and around the play-offs.”