KARL Robinson slammed his side’s performance as Oxford United crashed to a 4-0 defeat at Barnsley on the opening day of the season.

To make matters worse, Samir Carruthers looks set to be on the sidelines for three months with a knee ligament injury picked up in the first half.

It only increases the U’s boss’s desire to reinforce his squad – and he confirmed the proposed loan deal for Ricky Holmes was still on, while a “substantial” fee has been agreed with another target.

The club will hope to get those deals over the line early next week, but in the meantime Robinson will have to find answers to what went wrong at Oakwell.

“The people are sat in that stand showed more commitment than the players on the pitch,” he said.

“In some ways I’d rather get beat like that than get beat and everyone say we were unlucky.

“I know exactly where we’re weak, we lost the midfield. I had to go to four in midfield because our two couldn’t cope with their two.

“We lost the game in the middle of the pitch.”

He added: “Losing Samir Carruthers so quickly in the game (was key). He’s going to be out for nearly three months, we think. It’s a knee ligament problem and it doesn’t seem very stable.

“The tackle wasn’t great.

“Where they scored was where Samir should have been, it happened when we were down to ten men.”

Robinson was hoping to have two signings completed in time to strengthen the squad – one permanent move and the loan for Holmes.

On Thursday morning Sheffield United boss Chris Wilder revealed the winger was on his way, but the deal is still not completed due to administrative issues.

Robinson believes the deal is still on track, though.

He said: “He was with us, we were just waiting for one signature.

“They’ve got owners who were hard to get hold of and we didn’t manage to get the one signature we needed to by the allocated time.

“We’d like to think it’s still possible, we’ve been told it’s done in some ways.”

And on the potential central midfield signing, Robinson said: “We’ve agreed a fee with a football club and we’ve now got to agree personal terms with the player.

“We met the transfer fee, which was very substantial, on Thursday and we thought he would be in for the game today.

“That wasn’t to be the case, we still need to agree personal terms and we’re still a little away on that.

“He would be one of the top players at the club and he would add strength to our team and a little bit of aggression which we think we need.”