Oxford United's Blue Square Premier match at Histon tomorrow is now a must-win game after they threw away their their victory chance against Aldershot last weekend.

That's the view of the U's in-form new signing Paul Shaw, whose goal against the Shots was his second in three games.

Former Arsenal, Millwall, Gillingham and Sheffield United striker Shaw has played well over 500 league and cup games up and down the country, but admits he's never before turned out at the Glassworld Stadium, home of the Cambridgeshire village-based team Histon.

"No, I can't recall playing there,' he said.

"But, like a lot of these games, it's not going to be easy. We're going to have to go there and win the game.

"There'll be a lot of talk, I'm sure, and a lot of training before then, going over Saturday's game before we dust ourselves down and get ourselves ready for Histon."

United need to recover mentally from the psychological blow of somehow losing a match they should have won after all the momentum of the match had swung their way through their great second-half comeback.

"The Aldershot result was so disappointing because we started off the second half great, got the early goal, got ourselves back in the game and looked confident," Shaw said.

"When you get back in the game like we did, you're confident that you'll go on and win it. What happened just destroyed us.

"I don't know what happened with their third goal, it was disappointing when we had worked so hard.

"You have to give Aldershot credit because they didn't go under, but once you get back in the game as we did, you've got to go on and win it.

"I don't think we played particularly badly. We were passing quite well and creating chances ourselves, they were just two poor goals we gave away in the first half.

"It's just so disappointing that we get ourselves in positions where we're playing well in a game, we look quite comfortable, and we give the goals away that we do."

United slipped to ninth in the table after what was virtually a full Blue Square programme last night, with Histon 13th following their remarkable 5-4 defeat at home to Torquay.

Shaw, though, is enjoying his deeper-lying role where he plays just behind the strikers to link the midfield and forwards and help set up attacks.

"I've played that role a lot in my career," he says. I played it at Gillingham in the Championship, I know the role quite well - it means you can get on the ball quite a bit and play it through to other people, and it's down to me to get a few goals myself as well.

"I do enjoy it, but the most important thing is to win games and at the moment we aren't doing that.

"It's up to us to put that right."