JIM Smith is rallying his beleaguered Oxford United troops by insisting: "A new season starts here."

After Monday night's TV horror show against Rushden, the U's manager has moved quickly to bring in two players before the transfer window slammed shut on Wednesday night.

And he is hoping the arrival of Martin Foster from Halifax and Mickey Corcoran from Cardiff can galvanise a team which in two short months has mysteriously gone from invincible to pitiful.

Foster, the Halifax skipper, who has joined on loan until the end of the season, said: "The gaffer's been saying to us, the season starts from now. We've got to go all out to put all our efforts into getting automatic promotion or going up through the play-offs."

Smith confirmed the end of the January transfer window was like a new beginning and a fresh start.

"It's pretty much on those lines," he said. "It can't get any worse than it got on Monday.

"We have to think how fortunate we are to be in the position we're in, but it's not going to be there for ever.

"We've got to start again against Cambridge and go from there."

With the possibility of Chris Hargreaves going out as well, it has been a busy week behind the scenes in the transfer market but Smith was probably relieved about that.

"In all fairness, having to think about wheeling and dealing has probably made the week a lot easier than it would have been if I'd been thinking about that performance!

"Monday was a massive game that we blew. Funnily enough, I had a feeling about it, because we did that last year.

"But our best performance of the season was at Cambridge, so let's hope we can take that on board on Saturday."

He added: "Monday was a massive blow for us, obviously the result, but more for the way we played.

"As I've said before, we've had bad moments in every game, but over that period of seven or eight games, you can make a good case for us to have won seven of them.

"But we haven't got a natural goalscorer and to be fair to Robbie Duffy, nobody's helping him. Nobody scores from midfield, nobody scores a set play.

"That's what has let us down as much as anything - our inability to score when our chances come up. And I'm not talking about centre forwards, I'm talking about midfield players, full backs, defenders - Gavin Johnson's shot, that was a massive miss against Halifax at home - that would have made it 3-1 - and the same with his chance at Woking. You'd have put your house on it. But that's what's happening.

"They seemed to freeze on Monday, I don't know why that happened.

"We've had times in the season when we haven't played well, but we've never frozen like that.

"We didn't put two passes together, well maybe twice, but hopefully that's behind us and with fresh faces, it's a new situation tomorrow.

"They've not got to worry about Monday, some of them, because they weren't here.

"The beauty of football, with games coming thick and fast, is that you've got a great opportunity to put a setback behind you.

"What we have to do is start another run - quickly."

Foster and Corcoran will come into midfield and defence and there seem likely to be other changes too.

Smith knows he must now work with the players he's got, because there's no other leeway.

He said: "There is still the emergency loan system, in a week's time, but we haven't got a lot of manoeuvrability on that because of the wage cap, so what we've got is what we've got.

"We wouldn't have too many worries really, except for the fact that we've still got senior players out who are going to be out for some time.

"Injuries have been a serious problem for us, but we've got three players in and that helps to ease that situation. But the injuries to senior players has been catastrophic."

Smith said after a performance as bad as Monday night, there were two main options.

"You can stick with the same personnel and say they can't be as bad as that again, or you can change the personnel and the formation. We've changed personnel, obviously, with two or three new players coming in.

"We've had to do that because we are short squad-wise with all the injuries.

"So you can say 'you've got us into this mess, you owe it to yourself and to the fans to get us out of it', or you can not give them the chance to get out of that mess because you bring new players in."

There has been a feeling that some of United's older players were looking stale and the team needed freshening up, both with new faces, and younger players to provide more running and energy.

But Smith said that wasn't necessarily why he went for teenage loanees Danny Rose, Gregg Coombes and Corcoran.

"The main reason for getting young players is because you can afford them and you can get 'em.

"Senior players invariably won't come into the Conference, so you tend to loan younger players. And hopefully, as they have done, they give you fresh impetus and fresh legs."

Some fans have criticised Smith for offloading John Dempster to Kettering when on Monday, at least, the midfield looked too young and inexperienced.

United's manager responded: "I don't think John Dempster is the answer to our problems, and I don't think the fans do., but they soon change, because he's not there.

"If I'd put him on on Monday night, they'd have said 'what are you doing playing him?'"