CENTRE back Jake Wright believes Oxford United’s morning-after meeting was the perfect way to get this week’s Lincoln defeat out of their system.

Manager Chris Wilder made the players come in on Wednesday morning, when they would normally have been off, to go over the dismal defending in the previous night’s 3-1 defeat at Sincil Bank.

Wright said: “It was good for us to come in and go through it – then we can’t dwell on it for a few days, we can be fresh and looking forward to Saturday’s game.

“Obviously it’s a day-off and the lads don’t want to come in. But you need to do it sometimes.

“If it’s good for the club then we want to do it.

“We came in, had a chat, a cool down, talked about a few things and said let’s put it right on Saturday.”

The U’s are in the middle of three successive away games, and visit bottom club Stockport tomorrow before travelling to play-off challengers Port Vale tomorrow week.

“It’s going to be difficult,” Wright said. “Stockport need to win to help their chances of staying up, and the week after we’ve got Port Vale, who are looking to go up.

“We’ve got to make sure we get a result at Stockport. We’ve got 12 games left, that’s 36 points to play for. If we win a big chunk of them, we’ll be there or thereabouts.”

Although Lincoln forward Delroy Facey will try and claim the second goal, replays show it was a Harry Worley own goal.

And with Anthony Tonkin putting through his own net to make it 3-1, it was a night to forget for the visitors.

It is not be the first time Oxford have scored two own goals in one game. Jon Ashton and Jefferson Louis both put into their own net in a 2-1 defeat at Macclesfield in May 2004.

Wright said: “They were disappointed, but they were both trying to do the right thing . . . Harry was trying to stop the ball and it went in, Tonks was trying to clear the ball and he’s miskicked it, and it’s gone in.

“It’s not like they did a Cruyff turn and made a silly mistake.

“They were both trying to do the right things and were in the right positions.

“They were gutted about it Tuesday night, they got over it on Wednesday and we’re having a laugh and joke about it with taking the mickey a bit.

“We’ve just got to make sure we concentrate for 90 minutes and stop these silly goals.”

United manager Chris Wilder stressed it was not a punishment to get the players in the next morning.

“We just altered the week around a bit,” he said.

“I think it was important we had contact with the players. We’re bad losers and I make no bones about that because I think my team’s good enough.

“We’ve shown for a good part of the season that we’re good enough to be involved at the top of the league.”