United suffered a humiliating defeat in their first proper pre-season friendly this afternoon, at Yeading’s Warren ground. The Ding beat a full Oxford team 2-0 with a goal in each half. The most disappointing aspect for Us’ boss Brian Talbot will be that his team didn’t have an effort on target throughout the 90 minutes.

Talbot started with what was presumably his favoured starting XI, with a back four of Dave Mackay, Chris Willmott (who was captain for the day), Jon Ashton, and Matt Robinson, in front of goalkeeper Chris Tardif. The midfield quartet consisted of Chris Hackett, Barry Quinn, Chris Hargreaves, and Stuart Gray, while Lee Bradbury and Steve Basham started up front. None of these players completed the game, but by the time Talbot started to make wholesale changes the side were already two goals down.

United opened brightly, and had the home side on the back foot for the first quarter of an hour. Then Yeading scored out of the blue, when a half-cleared corner fell to Darti Brown, 20 yards out. Brown hit the ball sweetly on the volley and Tardif had no chance to prevent the goal. Ten minutes into the second half Tardif was replaced by Billy Turley, and one of the new goalie’s first duties was to pick the ball out of the net after some incisive passing cut United’s defence to ribbons, allowing one of Yeading’s two number 15s to score.

After going two down it was fairly clear that United were never going to score, with Craig Davies and triallist Stuart Beavon, who had replaced Basham and Bradbury at half-time, hardly getting a sniff of the ball. The other half-time change was Lee Mansell coming on for Dave Mackay at right back. As further changes took place, with Lee Molyneaux, Paul Burton, and youth-teamer Jerome Anderson replacing Hargreaves, Hackett, and Gray, followed by Chris Weedon and surprise package David Oldfield swapping for Robbo and Quinn, United lost all cohesion that they might have had, and Yeading started running rings around them. To be fair, the Ding also made a fair number of changes, but their rhythm didn’t seem to be so easily interrupted. The final change for the Us was when Willmott and Ashton were replaced by Dave Woozley and Leo Roget with about ten minutes to go, but somehow the home side failed to breach the Oxford defence again.

This was a disappointing performance from the Yellows, but hopefully will have come early enough in the pre-season for Talbot to address the deficiencies that were apparent. Chief among them was the inability of the forwards to trouble Delroy Preddie in the Yeading goal, despite some excellent crosses from Hackett. Chrissy also provided some dangerous corners, but despite big lads like Willmott, Ashton and Bradbury all in the area, there was an apparent unwillingness to attack the ball. The Oxford players were also too shot-shy, and towards the end they resorted to tame long shots that lacked both power and accuracy. In midfield Oxford lacked a player prepared to put his foot on the ball and spread a few passes around, although to give Yeading credit they rarely allowed the players in possession the time to settle. There was little concrete to point the finger at in defence, although both goals came from a result of poor marking.

All in all, this was a game best forgotten. United now have the traditional pre-season match at Oxford City on Tuesday with which to make amends.