Oxford United boss Denis Smith has pledged to improve his team so the fans don't have to go through another season of despair.

"We will be better next year and we won't be down at the bottom, that's for sure," he insisted after watching United lose 1-0 at Millwall their 25th defeat in 46 league games.

Millwall's win took them in to the end-of-season play-offs, but United put up a gutsy performance and Smith was proud of his players' commitment and that they had made the Londoners sweat all the way. "It's a credit to English football that Cardiff could go out and beat Bristol Rovers, that Reading could do a job against Stoke and that we could make Millwall fight all the way. These were three teams that supposedly had nothing to play for.

"It's been a hard game, but at least we haven't laid down and died, " Smith said.

"We did have something to play for we had pride, we had nearly 1,000 travelling fans and some of my players were playing for their futures.".

Smith, who has agreed a new one-year deal following his meeting with chairman Firoz Kassam last Thursday, will tell his out-of-contract players over the next two days which ones are to be retained or released.

"We've got Mike Ford's Testimonial on Monday and after that we'll sit down with the players. Everybody knows it should have been done earlier. That's nobody's fault, it's the situation we're in." Phil Whelan, one of those whose contract is up, said: "It was incredibly hot out there and Millwall seem to come at us in wave after wave, but I think we defended well. I have no idea whether I'm going to get another contract." With Cardiff winning their final game, Oxford stayed up by just one point and they ended the season with less than a point per game.

"I am just glad we're in the division," Smith added. "You don't know how it might have been had we needed to win this last game. Joey Beauchamp might have been on the bench and it might have been a different game."