GARY Rowett was pleased with the defensive resoluteness shown by his back four as Oxford United kept a clean sheet in their goalless draw at Derby County.
Between them, United’s defensive unit won 18 aerial balls, with Peter Kioso managing the most on six.
Right back Kioso and centre half Michal Helik managed 11 clearances each, while Ciaron Brown and Greg Leigh each produced five.
Those defensive contributions helped the U’s keep a third clean sheet in their last six Sky Bet Championship games.
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United head coach Rowett said: “It’s nice to come away from places like this and not get beat up physically and not come under as much pressure as I felt we might do.
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“I thought they put a lot more balls in the box and put us under a lot more pressure, but I actually thought we negated a lot of that.
“They had a few headers from not massively promising positions, maybe one or two, but I thought we defended on the whole pretty well.
“What you need to do in games like this is just show a little bit of composure to get out of those pressure moments, and whenever we did that, [David] Ozoh and [Ebou] Adams just kept stepping back into those areas and used their physicality, which they do so well.”
