Waddock shocked at U's slumped

Gary Waddock admitted the task he faces is bigger than expected after Oxford fell to a third straight defeat, losing 2-0 to Fleetwood.

United, who were top as recently as December, have been in freefall since February, and have managed just one win in 10 games. A goal in each half from David Ball and Antoni Sarcevic, both from set-pieces, brought Fleetwood a comfortable win as they closed the gap on third-placed Chesterfield. Waddock has had a baptism of fire since he was appointed head coach last month. He said: "It's a harder job than I imagined, when I see how much the confidence has drained from the players. "I'm bitterly disappointed with the result. "At the moment, losing has become a habit and we have to turn that around as quickly as possible. "They score and it just deflated us. "We were quite happy with the way we played in the first 25 minutes and went toe to toe with them. "But when they scored you could see what little confidence we had drain out of us. "We have to be mentally stronger than that. And we haven't got a lot of time to do it. "We have to be more positive in possession, in our decision-making, and getting up the field. "How many times have we worked the goalkeeper in the last few games? It really isn't very many." But Waddock does hope that dropping out of the play-offs may at least take some of the pressure off his new team. "Possibly the players have been looking over their shoulders, now we can see the teams above and chase them down," he added.