Eddie Anaclet is gutted to miss out on Stevenage Borough’s visit to the Kassam Stadium on Saturday.

The Oxford-born right winger, who moved from United to Broadhall Way last summer, after rejecting a new contract Oxford put to him, has been out for the past four weeks with a knee injury, the same knee that caused him some grief last season.

He said: “I played for a few weeks with it, but it was no better and so I’ve had complete rest and it’s better again now.

“I’ve just started running again and am about to return to full training, so it’s really disappointing that it looks as though the Oxford game will come just too early.

“The physio has targeted the Boxing Day match for me, so Oxford is just a week too early, and I’m gutted to miss it really.

“But I’ll still be at the game to see a lot of my old friends.”

The 23-year-old, who played alongside Theo Walcott when the two of them were trainees at Southampton, added: “It’s the same knee that kept me out for six weeks last season.

“I didn’t get the injury as bad this time as then, but they decided it needed complete rest.

“It’s a real shame to miss Saturday because I was so looking forward to playing back at the Kassam Stadium,” said Eddie, brother of the Abingdon United striker Anaclet Odhiambo.

Installed as Conference title fav-ourites, as they were before, after finishing sixth last year, making several big signings and the way they beat former manager Mark Stimson’s Gillingham in pre-season, Stevenage then got off to a terrible start.

Among their terrible early results was a 5-0 thrashing at wrexham, in which Steve Morison was sent off, and they fell to 23rd place after three games.

But when leading scorer Morison returned from suspension Boro began to rise up the table, and when they hammered Burton Albion 4-1 with Morison hitting a hat-trick, it showed what they are capable of.

Morison’s ten goals in September earned him the Blue Square Premier’s player of the month award.

But it’s still been very up and down for Graham Westley’s team since then.

Anaclet said: “As a team we’ve performed indifferently. We’ve beaten burton by a big score, and not many teams have done that, but we’ve also lost games we shouldn’t have. We haven’t really maintained any consistency.

“We still believe we can reach the play-offs at least, but then there’s a whole load of teams in the division that believe that, and Oxford are one of them.”

Dino Maamria, the former Northwich Victoria boss, last month joined the club as Westley’s No 2.