Chris Wilder felt his Oxford United team should have been completely out of sight at half-time instead of ending up losing 2-0 to Torquay last night.

The U’s crashed to their second successive npower League Two defeat on a night of frustration at the Kassam Stadium.

James Constable missed two golden opportunities in front of goal, and a stack of chances went begging as Oxford failed to overcome a Gulls team who played for 73 minutes with ten men after midfielder Lloyd Macklin was sent off.

Oxford paid the price for their wastefulness when they were hit on the break late on, Torquay sub Billy Kee adding to Damian Batt’s own goal early in the match.

Wilder said: “I thought the game should have been completely out of sight in the first half with the dominance that we had and the way we moved the ball about.

“We keep saying the same things. We are suffering a bit at the minute. We’re waiting for things to happen, there’s anxiety in our play, which you get, but with a couple of goals and a win we could have got ourselves back up and running again.

“We should have been a couple of goals in front at half-time, and had that happened, we’d have gone on to win the game comfortably.

“But in the second half, we changed the way we played. We gave the ball away so cheaply it was frightening.

“Then obviously everybody becomes anxious around the place, which is quite natural.

“They (the crowd) feel that we should be comfortably winning the game. The players have got to be mentally strong enough to take that on board, but the longer the game went on, the more it seemed we weren’t going to get anything out of it.

“Ryan Clarke made two or three great saves from them on the counter, and they should have sealed the win before they did.”

Wilder threw on Alfie Potter and Sam Deering at half-time, but United created far fewer chances in the second half.

“I brought on two wingers in the second half, but we never got it wide,” he said.