We will be adding plenty of miles to the team bus this week and we made the long trip up to Sunderland yesterday and then trained at Newcastle’s training ground ahead of today’s game at the Stadium of Light.

What a fantastic place to play your football, followed by a trip to Doncaster’s excellent ground and then Stadium MK.

It shouldn’t matter what the surface is or what the stands look like, but somehow when you go to these great grounds, it does lift you and make you want to show that you can perform on the big stages.

I am sure our fans will travel to all three games looking forward to visiting those places and hoping we can go into the Christmas period with three excellent results.

I almost wrote ‘positive results’ there but after the last couple of weeks that’s maybe not the best choice of wording.

We had too many positive results before the games against Fleetwood and Rotherham but still came away with four points from those two games despite missing 13 players.

There are times you shake your head at the situation you find yourself in.

Luckily we have become really good at adapting and changing our routines and that meant we still came through what could have been a horrendous week.

I want to thank the players who came into the side.

They gave us absolutely everything they had and should be very proud of their efforts.

I also want to thank the staff because it wasn’t as well-documented but there were four members of the first team staff also missing and that put extra strain on other people.

Nobody complained, everyone just accepted the responsibility and got on with it.

And most of all I want to thank the fans.

In our hour of need you were there for us and we won’t forget that.

I said before the games that Oxford fans will always forgive mistakes if you are wearing your heart on your sleeve and obviously care about the yellow shirt you are wearing.

I think there was a little bit of a nervous feeling at the start of the Fleetwood game where supporters weren’t quite sure how we were going to perform.

But the moment they saw the commitment and the passion, they really got behind the players and by the final whistle against Rotherham there was a true feeling of a job well done from everyone whether they were on the pitch or in the stands.