SIMON Eastwood described Oxford United’s opening day disaster at Barnsley as a “reality check”, but warned against overreacting to the result.

The Sky Bet League One campaign got off to a woeful start, as a strong Tykes side eased to a 4-0 win at Oakwell.

It left United bottom of the table 90 minutes into the season.

But Eastwood is well aware they were at the other end of the division after two games 12 months ago, before eventually limping to a 16th-place finish in May.

The goalkeeper is one of the most experienced heads in the changing room and while he felt United got what they deserved at Barnsley, one result will not prompt panic.

He said: “You can score all the goals or keep as many clean sheets as you want in pre-season, I don’t think it means too much.

“It’s completely different to the league games and it’s probably a bit of a reality check for us.

“We need to be coming to places like this and at least be giving the side a game. We didn’t do that at all.”

He added: “If you look at the long run, we started with two wins last season and two clean sheets and it didn’t get us far.

“It’s not something we’ll beat ourselves up about too much.

“It’s the first game of the season, we’ve lost three points and that’s it.”

U’s boss Karl Robinson knows the danger of reading too much into the opening result of the season.

He said: “(At MK Dons) we won 4-1 in the first game and got relegated, because we thought we were better than we were.

“Certainly, after this performance people will tell you we’re not as good as we first thought.”

The result leaves United in the unenviable position of looking to regroup this week, just one game into the campaign.

And Eastwood believes some of those who played on Saturday need to deliver a response more than others.

He said: “There are players in there who deserve a rollicking.

“I watched it as much as you do and there were some players maybe not giving as much as they had been in pre-season.

“I don’t know why that is, hopefully it’s just a one-off, we can refocus and go again.

“You could say that’s the first real game we’ve played and we need to do a lot better.

“Hopefully we can do that against Fleetwood.”