CAMERON Brannagan hailed Oxford United’s spirit for the way they stuck together and won with ten men.

Marcus Browne’s red card on the stroke of half-time appeared to hand the advantage to hosts Walsall.

The score was 1-1 at that stage, but the U’s were positive despite the numerical disadvantage and went on to win 3-1 thanks to goals from Luke Garbutt and Jerome Sinclair.

Brannagan said: “Going down to ten men, it’s never easy.

“Sometimes for the opposition it’s not easy either, because you’re thinking you’ve got to pile forward and score.

“But we stayed together as a team and picked them off.

“Bang, that was it. Game over.

“We’re together as a team. We could have been down to nine men and still stayed together.

“At the minute, we’re very strong as a team and it’s very hard to break us down.”

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The red card came just before the half-time interval, giving United time to come up with a game plan.

But Brannagan always felt confident, after a first half where the visitors had rarely been troubled.

He said: “They scored off a little mistake and that happens.

“But we knew they’d not caused us any real problems.

“We just said at half-time we needed to stay in our shape and we would get chances on the break.

“We did that and punished them to take the three points.”