Knowing a win would move them out of the bottom three for the first time this year, Oxford started brilliantly as Helik chested down Cameron Brannagan’s long free-kick from halfway and shinned a finish past goalkeeper David Cornell.<\/p>\n
Brown headed over when unmarked, and a moment later, Osmajic found a yard of space to meet Ben Whiteman’s fine cross and head in from close range.<\/p>\n
More shaky defending drew boos from the home fans as Jamie Donley was given space to cushion a shot just past the post before Stan Mills was allowed to run from deep in his own half into the Preston penalty area but blazed over.<\/p>\n
Lankshear did well to block Whiteman’s goalbound volley, but the Tottenham loanee striker was found wanting at the other end when played in on goal as a poor first touch allowed Cornell to smother.<\/p>\n
The U’s had mustered just nine second-half goals in the Championship this season and may have feared their chance of a fourth away win of the campaign had gone.<\/p>\n
But Lankshear made amends for his earlier miss as he stuck out a toe to divert Mills’ low shot just inside the right-hand post with Preston’s back line again caught ball watching.<\/p>\n
And the hosts’ soft centre was exposed again as Myles Peart-Harris’ long throw was flicked on for Brown who outmuscled Lewis Gibson to steer in a close-range finish and equal Oxford’s biggest win of the season.<\/p>\n
The Lilywhites pressed in a desperate bid to salvage something, but Jordan Thompson’s snapshot, beat clear by U’s keeper Jamie Cumming, was the best they could muster as they limped to a fourth home defeat in their past six matches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Knowing a win would move them out of the bottom three for the first time this year, Oxford…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292418,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-508648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}