LIAM Sercombe admitted Oxford United could feel the tension in the air as they battled to a 1-1 draw at Newport County last night as the squad’s injury crisis worsened.

It ensured Michael Appleton’s men stayed in Sky Bet League Two’s automatic promotion places – but only by the skin of their teeth.

The four-point gap they held over fourth place on Saturday morning is now down to just goal difference.

Jordan Bowery opened the scoring in the 12th minute, but it was quickly cancelled out by Medy Elito.

Chey Dunkley came closest to putting the visitors in front early in the second half, but the U’s were grateful to a fantastic save from Benji Buchel to deny Mark Byrne a late winner.

Considering the players missing for United, this was a hard-fought point on a very difficult pitch.

Their injury nightmares continued with Kemar Roofe hobbling out of the warm-up, while Jordan Evans came off with a suspected broken rib.

But United’s season is now on a knife-edge with three games remaining and Sercombe could feel the nerves around the game, especially in the closing stages.

He said: “It did feel quite tense, because before the game we were saying ‘we don’t want to lose this’.

“Coming to the end of the game they had a few set-pieces, so we just wanted to keep the ball out of the net.

“It’s a good point, the main thing is we’re in the top three and everyone would have taken that at the start of the season.”

He added: “We tried as much as we could, it just wasn’t falling for us.

“It was a very difficult surface to play on – it was bobbling all over the place.

“We’ve got a lot of players missing at the minute, so we have to take that result as a good point with that in mind.”

Appleton acknowledged it was a testing night at Rodney Parade, but could not criticise the efforts of the players who did feature.

He said: “It was like an A&E department in the dressing room at half-time with people going down and struggling.

“They gave me everything they could out there – there’s no doubt about that.

“We’ve got to stay calm and focused.

“The lads who came in did themselves no harm at all, because it was a gutsy performance.”