DES Buckingham was pleased with how Greg Leigh adjusted to playing a more reserved role for Oxford United in the side’s 4-0 win at Burton Albion.

Leigh’s performances for the U’s have been characterised by him bombing on from left back, or wing back, providing both width and a goal threat.

However, in the aftermath of the 5-0 hammering at Bolton Wanderers, Buckingham switched to a 4-3-3 system with wingers high up the pitch and two attacking midfielders sat in front of a single six in Cameron Brannagan.

The tweak means there is less emphasis on United’s full backs to provide an attacking threat.

The first game of the new system, the 2-0 victory at Port Vale, saw Joe Bennett replace Leigh at left back, with the former then keeping his place in the team against Shrewsbury Town and Fleetwood Town.

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Bennett though picked up a knock during training in midweek, allowing Leigh the opportunity to get back into the starting XI for the victory against the Brewers.

U’s head coach Buckingham said: “The way we’ve set up in the last couple of weeks isn’t necessarily a strength of Greg’s. He wants to get forward and join in, and play the way the team was playing at the start of the season.

“When you’ve got Josh Murphy now, and someone who can occupy that central area, we don’t need too often the full back to join in.

“It’s more of a supporting role, with the ability to still join in the attack, but in a very different way.

“I’ll give full credit to Greg. He’s adapted to it extremely well and he’s shown he’s more than capable of doing it.

“It’s a very good problem we’ll have, because I’m fully expecting Joe Bennett to be fit and available, not just for the game on Saturday, but the three after.

“That’ll be a good battle those two will have, and we’ll need it for those four games.”

Across the four games that United have played with their new system, the side has only conceded once, with another clean sheet kept at Burton.

Buckingham said: “We knew that they’d have to stand up and fight, and if you look at the amount of corners and long throws that were chucked into our box, I thought they dealt with that extremely well.

“What I like with that, where if we win the first one and keep the second, in transition, we’re extremely dangerous with the pace we have, and we saw that with two of the goals.”