Having won just four Championship games in the first half of last season, Oxford were staring at an immediate return to League One.<\/p>\n
But they appointed the experienced Rowett – who had managed Millwall, Birmingham City, Derby County and Stoke City in the second tier – with the aim of securing Championship survival.<\/p>\n
He turned Oxford’s fortunes around quickly, winning three successive matches over the Christmas period to open up a nine-point gap to the relegation zone as part of a nine-game unbeaten run in the league that ultimately secured United’s survival.<\/p>\n
Despite going on a run of five games without a win, Rowett’s side rallied with four wins and two draws in the final nine games of the season to end the campaign in 17th place, four points above the drop zone.<\/p>\n
But despite keeping a large chunk of their squad this season, Oxford have struggled – their tally of 22 goals scored is the fourth-worst in the division with on-loan 20-year-old Tottenham striker Will Lanskhear their top scorer with five goals. <\/p>\n
They lost their opening three league games this season and were thrashed 6-0 at home by Premier League side Brighton in the second round of the Carabao Cup during a difficult August.<\/p>\n
It took until 21 September to get their first league win – a 3-1 victory at Bristol City – but they won just three more games under Rowett, the last a 2-1 victory over Ipswich Town on 28 November.<\/p>\n
With Sheffield Wednesday effectively relegated – sitting 30 points from safety on minus nine points after deductions for financial infringements – Oxford’s hierarchy have decided to act now in the hope they can avoid being one of the other two sides who will join them in League One come May. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Having won just four Championship games in the first half of last season, Oxford were staring at an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-206620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}