DES Buckingham was left sickened by a late killer blow, but proud of the way his Oxford United side approached their Sky Bet Championship clash at Coventry City.

Haji Wright scored six minutes into second half stoppage time to give the Sky Blues all three points in a 3-2 victory.

It was cruel on United, who had shown great spirit to twice bring the game level.

U’s head coach Buckingham said: “Football is a cruel game and the last 30 seconds of that game has shown exactly that.

“But as I’ve just said to the players in there, they can be so proud of the way that they’ve come away from what was a wonderful performance last week to this place, which has a great atmosphere, against a very tough team, but to come here and play the way we have, to be brave enough to try and continue what we do against this team, I can’t ask for much more than that.

“If we show that same desire, and that same togetherness that I’ve seen here, where we should leave here with a point minimum, but that’s what happens in this league.

“If we do that in the next 44 league games, we’ll put ourselves in a very strong space.

“We’re getting a quick taste of it, but the reality is we should have four points from the two games.

“It’s a killer blow, but what it can’t do is detract away from the 96 minutes that went before it.

“We’ve spoke about having an identity and playing the way we want to play, and we will be brave and try and trust what we do at this level, and if we lose games, we’ll lose them playing the way we want to play.

“Hopefully that doesn’t happen too often, and hopefully we’ll come away with some results when it hasn’t gone against us.

“It’s making sure we stick true to that, and anyone that’s seen the game, they can hopefully see that.”

Buckingham added: “You look at the calibre and quality of the players in this league, and you can shut one or two areas off, but the players are good enough to work it into other areas.

“You can’t stop everything, you have to prioritise areas, and we made some tweaks at half-time to that effect.

“We are going to come up against different tests, and it’s how quickly now we react in-game to make sure we stay on top and minimise what those threat are, while putting ourselves in a good position for when we won the ball, to break and play our game.”