Michael Appleton did not know where to start when summing up the positive aspects of Oxford United’s winagainst Mansfield Town.

After a tense start, they sauntered to a 3-0 victory which eased the pressure on both the head coach and his side.

It was the U’s biggest winning margin in more than a year, with Alex MacDonald scoring twice and Danny Hylton returning to the scoresheet.

Appleton was thrilled with the much-needed result.

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He said: “The performance was obviously good, on a cabbage patch.

“There were some really good individual performances with players coming back into form, which was good, then three goals and a clean sheet, where do you start?

“I think there was a realisation from the players, where they genuinely thought ‘we’ve got ourselves into this mess, we have to get ourselves out of it’.”

United had made a big effort to rally everyone together for the crunch game and Appleton paid tribute to the role played by the supporters.

“The fans were fantastic,” he said.

“The atmosphere in here against Luton (in the last home game) was as good as it’s been for a long time and we were close to that again.

“Once we got the second goal the place nearly lifted off.”

United were forced into a reshuffle following a hamstring injury to Joe Skarz on Friday.

It is not thought to be too serious, but in his place Appleton opted to play Sam Long in an unfamiliar role, instead of Jon Meades.

He said: “It was an easy one for me, Sam hasn’t let me down once and he defends the far post really well.

“I thought after the first five minutes he was very good.

“I just had a feeling with their wide players and the runs they make it might cause Jon a few problems.”