OXFORD United’s recent crop of academy graduates are showing talented youngsters at the club there is a pathway for them, says academy manager Stevie Kinniburgh.

United’s Under-18s sealed a place in the fifth round of the FA Youth Cup with a 3-1 win against Cardiff City last week.

The U’s will discover their opponents in the last 16 when AFC Wimbledon host Leeds United this evening.

Gatlin O’Donkor and Josh Johnson both starred for Chris Hackett’s side at the Kassam Stadium last week, having also featured for the first team against Arsenal in the Emirates FA Cup the night before.

Johnson set up United’s equaliser against Cardiff with a raking diagonal pass out to left back Rashane Maxwell, who took a touch to control the ball and charged into the area, before finding the bottom far corner.

Within sixty seconds, the U’s went ahead when O’Donkor fired in a sweet volley from just outside the box.

The 18-year-old striker made sure of United’s progress into the next round when he capitalised on a mix-up at the back and stayed calm to finish into an empty net from 18 yards.

Kinniburgh said the likes of O’Donkor and Johnson are not just a source of inspiration for their peers in the Under-18s but the entire academy system.

“It’s not even just the teammates, it’s the younger academy altogether,” said Kinniburgh.

“I was with the Under-15s and they’re talking about Gatlin O’Donkor, Josh Johnson and Tyler Goodrham.

“These young players throughout the whole academy are looking up to these young boys and seeing that opportunity, so it’s not even just the initial boys that are in that team at the minute, it’s all the way down the system.

“They’re all talking about how it’s a reality to go and do what these boys are doing.”

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On the U’s team which has made the fifth round of the FA Youth Cup, Kinniburgh said: “Within youth football, you’ve got to have two strands to it.

“You’ve got to have a development side and that is 100 per cent ‘how do we make these players better?’.

“That’s what we’ve been concentrating on in the last couple of months, what do these individual players need to become better football players?

“Then we use the FA Youth Cup as that psychological and mental side, how do we develop these players to win because ultimately football is about winning when you get to first team level.”