It's back to the real deal – the league – for Oxford United on Friday, and their final game before Christmas is a tough one.

Cambridge are always difficult opponents on their own patch, and with Martin Ling now at the helm, the “other U’s” have started to produce some eye-catching results.

Oxford United boss Chris Wilder said: “It’s possibly our hardest away game so far.

“They’re a team that maybe have not had that consistency over the past few years, for some reason.

“But they were 3-0 up after just over half an hour last Saturday against a Luton team that had just turned over Rotherham in the FA Cup, so that shows what they’re capable of.

“They’ve got good players and good staff and are good enough, I believe, to have the kind of run that we had last year.”

After FA Cup and FA Tro-phy ties themselves, Oxford are now fully focused on the job in hand, of accumulating as many league points as they can.

“This isn’t a game that will define our season,” said Wilder, who is approaching exactly one year in charge.

He knows that nothing has been achieved yet, but that the team are in a great position, five points clear of second-placed Stevenage and an amazing 16 points clear of sixth-placed AFC Wimbledon.

“All we’ve done is put ourselves in a really good position,” he said.

“I spoke with Kelvin (Thomas, United’s chairman) at the start of the season and we both felt that if we’re in and around the play-offs at Christmas, we’d be pretty satisfied, because we feel we can kick on in the New Year.”

Wilder says plans are already in place to strengthen the squad with a couple of targets lined up for the January transfer window.

And when the season’s fixtures first came out, it looked then as though Oxford had a much easier run-in than, for example, their programme at the start of the season.

So to be top of the table is very satisfying.

But there can be no resting on their laurels.

“The big thing is that we compete,” said Wilder.

“I was very pleased with our reaction after the Tuesday night game at Barrow.

“The tempo, desire, were both there last Saturday.

“Sometimes those aren’t the easiest of situations when, although it was the second biggest crowd of the day in the Trophy, there were only 1600 fans, which can make the atmosphere less intense.”

That win over Luton – it finished 3-1 – will have lifted Cambridge’s confidence.

Their assistant manager and skipper, Paul Carden, said this week: “We proved on Saturday that we can beat the best in the division and that on our day, we’re a match for anyone in our league.

“The result gives us a massive boost.

“The league table shows our form has been patchy and we’ve drawn quite a few games.

“Hopefully, Saturday will make the lads realise we are a good team.”

And boss Ling, the former Swindon Town player and manager, said: “With Oxford, two games against Stevenage and a trip to Mansfield, we’ve got a very tough run of games coming up.

“If you wanted to put a hard December and New Year’s Day in front of somebody, you couldn’t get much harder than that.

“It will certainly tell us what we’re all about and these next four games in a 15-day period will be a big test for the squad, but December has been a profitable month for us so far.”

Cambridge will be without 29-year-old striker Lee Phil-lips, whose knee injury rules him out until the New Year.