WILL Vaulks gave an honest assessment of where Oxford United are at, admitting the team is ‘not good enough’ to give up opportunities to their opponents.

The U’s are enduring a tough time at the moment, suffering three defeats on the spin.

The 3-0 loss at Sheffield United followed defeats against Watford and Middlesbrough, although admittedly all three of those sides are in the hunt for promotion to the Premier League.

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United midfielder Vaulks said: “There’s no denying the last few weeks have been tough. We’ve faced some tough opponents.

“It’s probably more what I expected when I came into the club. The first few games we played, we did well, but the teams we played against, to be honest with you, didn’t turn up.

“Potentially that gave the fans and the outside a view of the way the league would be.

“You have games like this, and you have to really be together. We can’t give anything, we’re not good enough to give teams chances.

“Watford for example have got four or five players in that team that can go and score a worldie goal.

“They’ve got top players, and we have a team that needs to be together, and as soon as you come away and make little mistakes, you get punished.”

Discussing the defeat at Bramall Lane, Vaulks said: “You come to places like this, and you can’t concede sloppy goals. To concede a goal from a long throw, we should do better at.

“It’s an uphill battle from there, we know that. We came here to try and frustrate them, and hit them on the counter-attack, and that goal goes in, and then another one shortly after.

“It’s a tough place to come against a team looking to get promoted out of this league into the Premier League.

“You can’t give them an inch, and I thought we gave them two poor goals, and then you really are facing it.

“I thought we had some good opportunities early on. That’s why it’s so frustrating to concede the goal from a throw-in because the game felt okay until that point.

“There’s nothing we can do about it now. From Saturday, we wanted a response, but if we’re realistic and honest about it, these aren’t the places that we come to keep us in the Championship.

“We’d like to come here and take points obviously, that was the aim, but there are times when we have to have a bit of realism.

“They’re a very good team and have got Premier League players on four times wages probably. It’s a tough place to come.”