DES Buckingham wants to see Oxford United match their performances in each half, after watching his side draw at home to Reading.

Mark Harris gave the U’s the lead just after half an hour in the first league derby between the sides at Grenoble Road.

However, a Ciaron Brown own goal with 14 minutes to go ensured the Royals were able to claim a draw.

United head coach Buckingham said: “I thought in the first half, we deserved our 1-0 lead and potentially should’ve had another.

“In the second half, we didn’t control the game and we got caught up in a bit of chaos, which played into their hands a little bit.

“Overall, a draw is probably a fair result. We need to make sure we do more in the second half, to pin these two halves together, to make sure we come away with the result we all want.”

With no Sam Long, Fin Stevens and Oisin Smyth due to injury, the U’s faced a choice at right back.

Rather than switch to a back three, Buckingham opted to play Stephan Negru at right back, with the 21-year-old arguably not doing enough to stop the run of Kelvin Ehibhatiomhan, whose cross was then put into his own net by Brown for the leveller.

Buckingham said: “The choice was to replace player for player. Sam Long is the right back, and Fin’s come in, and done extremely well, and then we’ve put Oisin there, almost as a third choice right back.

“We lost Oisin, so it was a choice of if we didn’t play Steph there, we’d have to change the whole set-up, off the back of Tuesday when we played extremely well.

“We felt that was the right decision, and we worked with Steph on Thursday and Friday, and I think the goal, yes he could’ve done better, but also in the goal we scored, he did extremely well to move the ball into Tyler Burey.

“We could’ve changed within game but if you go to a back three, it doesn’t quite suit the way we want to play.”