Oxford United boss Matt Bloomfield praises Sheffield Wednesday fans
Both The Owls and Oxford United will be playing in League One next season
Oxford United manager, Matt Bloomfield, said Sheffield Wednesday fans were a ‘credit’ to their club.
Owls supporters sold out their allocation of just over 1,400 for the last away game of the season and they created a party atmosphere at the Kassam Stadium.
The U’s found out that they had been relegated before the game got underway after both Charlton Athletic and West Brom got the results they needed in the early kick-offs to ensure they could not be caught. Bloomfield said he was ‘terribly disappointed’ that they ‘came up short’ in their battle to avoid the drop.
It means they will be playing in League One with Wednesday next season and there was gallows humour from both sets of fans as they joined in songs about going to Bromley.
“I played at Hillsborough (for Wycombe in 2012) when Sheffield Wednesday got promoted and the atmosphere was incredible,” Bloomfield told The Wednesday Word. “The way those guys have supported their team and the banter between the two two sets of supporters today. When you have got a football club in your heart like that you want to support them through thick and thin and I thought both sets of supporters, in really tough circumstances, were absolute credits to their football clubs.”
Despite already knowing their fate, Oxford approached the game in a positive manner and were deserved 4-1 winners. They could easily have taken their foot off the gas but they attacked the fixture and could have won by a bigger margin.
“We played properly today and that is what we wanted,” Bloomfield explained. “If the day was not going to work out for us, like it didn’t, I still wanted us to perform properly and we did so I am at least content with that. There was some real good football in there and some good goals. I hope that is a sign of things to come for us.”
After the game, Owls boss Henrik Pedersen admitted he was surprised by Oxford’s game-plan, saying they had planned for more of a direct style.
On that, Bloomfield added: “We wanted to slightly evolve the way we were playing today. We made a few changes and we felt the way we played complemented the changes we made.”