Oxford United bring down the curtain tomorrow on an enjoyable first season back in the Football League.

Their 46th game is a first visit to Shrewsbury’s Greenhous Meadow.

A terrific atmosphere is guaranteed from a near-capacity 9,000 crowd, with the Shrews hoping to better Wycombe Wanderers’ result to clinch automatic promotion to npower League One.

And for United, who have been on a good run for much of March, and the whole of April, they would love to finish on a high, to send out a statement of intent for next season.

Said manager Chris Wilder: “I think it’s been an enjoyable season, and a satisfying season as well.

“I think we’ll all look back and say that at times we perhaps could have done a little better, so at times, it’s been a bit frustrating.

“There have been a few ups and downs. But there have been a lot of plusses, in terms of getting back into the Football League.”

The U’s had fine wins over Port Vale, Crewe and Burton during the second half of March, but the 3-0 defeat at Bury on April 2 brought them crashing back down to earth, with a realisation that they were still some way off the division’s top teams.

Yet that chastening defeat came about mainly because of a dreadful start.

After that game, Wilder challenged his players to see if they could go the rest of the season unbeaten. It was a tough challenge, because every one of their opponents had something to play for – a chance to go up, or in Barnet and Lincoln’s case to stay up.

So far, Oxford have remained unbeaten in five of the six.

And Wilder added: “We asked the players a month back to put a run together this year, and to do the same next year, if we’re going to be better.

“This game will be a full house, I think we’ve got 200 tickets left . . . we’d love to sell them to make it a full house.

“There’ll be a great atmosphere, they’ve got something to play for, and from our point of view, there’s certainly something for us to play for, so everybody’s looking forward to it.”

As Wilder has emphasised in the past, there is no such thing as a meaningless game of football for United, because they want to win every match.

“There’s always the pressure we put on ourselves to want to win,” said the U’s boss. “We always do that, we make demands to go and win games of football.

“We did it at half-time against Lincoln. People will be thinking we’ll just go out the back door in that game.

“We did it at Barnet, we did it at Accrington – that’s how we are.”