United lost their last first-team friendly 4-1 last night, to a strong Manchester United side. The Reds were 3-0 up after 17 minutes, but United rallied and pulled a goal back just before the half-hour, before the away side finished off the game in the second half.

United started with their likely starting eleven for their first Conference game, at home to Halifax on Saturday, with Billy Turley in goal, a back three of Matt Day, Barry Quinn, and Phil Gilchrist, with Eddie Odhiambo-Anaclet and Gavin Johnson as the wing backs. The midfield trio comprised John Dempster, Carl Pettefer, and Eddie Hutchinson, while Andy Burgess and Rob Duffy played up front. The visitors included Mikael Silvestre, Gabriel Heinze, Cristiano Ronaldo, Louis Saha, and the fabulous Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, as well as Kieron Richardson.

The Yellows had a taste of things to come as early as the third minute, when Turley had to be alert to smother the ball at the feet of Saha. Three minutes later, though, and the visitors took the lead when Solskjaer curled the ball over Turley after good set-up play involving Saha and Ronaldo. United barely had time to draw breath before finding themselves 2-0 down. This time Saha played in Ronaldo, whose crisp finish left Turley with no chance. Unfortunately, the same can not be said for Manchester’s third goal, four minutes later. Darren Fletcher’s shot from just outside the area did move in the air, but Turley should have done better than merely palm the ball into the net.

Despite these goals, United rallied and were able to slow down the Manchester momentum. The Oxford midfield started to hold the ball better, and Burgess began to pass the ball around to good effect. The Oxford goal, after 27 minutes, came from the best move of the match, which started with Hutchinson picking up the ball in the centre of the pitch. He passed the ball left to Johnson, whose neat backheel set Burgess free. His pin-point cross found Duffy on the edge of the six yard box, and his header beat Ben Foster.

The goal lifted United, and they spurned a couple of other good opportunities to pull back another goal before half-time. First, from a Johnson cross, Duffy found himself unmarked three yards out, but headed tamely straight at Foster. Second, Hutchinson got into a good position to head a Burgess cross narrowly wide when he should, perhaps, have done better. Gilchrist almost got in as well, when he powered a header wide following a corner.

United made two changes at half-time, with Chris Tardif replacing Turley, and Chris Willmott coming on for Gilchrist. The visitors made just one change, taking off the woeful John O’Shea. Despite these changes it was United who had the better of the opening minutes of the second half, with Eddie Anaclet and Burgess both looking threatening. However, the visitors always looked dangerous on the counter attack, with the pace of Richardson and Ronaldo troubling United’s somewhat slower defenders. Tardif had already made one decent save from one of these counter attacks, but he could do nothing to keep out Ronaldo’s second goal from just inside the area.

United made further changes, with Steve Basham replacing Duffy, and Chris Hargreaves getting some action instead of Pettefer on the hour mark. Another double substitution with ten minutes left saw Yemi Odubade come on for United’s man-of-the-match Burgess, and triallist Mo Lamine replacing Johnson. However, there was no further action to speak of, and the game petered out as many spectators started leaving to beat the traffic.

The gulf between the sides proved insurmountable, but United made a decent fist of the game and Jim Smith will have been pleased with certain aspects of the performance. He may be worried about the lack of pace throughout the team, which was evident especially in the second half as United found themselves stretched by the visitors. While it might be expected that United found scoring opportunities difficult to come by, Smith may be concerned at the lack of clinical finishing for those opportunities that did present themselves. However, it won’t be every week that the Us will find themselves facing a team of Manchester’s calibre, so perhaps these causes for concern might be less prevalent against United’s more workaday opposition.