Chris Wilder said that both he and the fans could be proud of his team, despite seeing Oxford United bow out of the Car-ling Cup last night.

The U’s went down 3-1 to Cardiff after extra time, but not before they had given the Championship side a real scare.

And if loan signing Lewis Guy had managed to get a better contact on the ball in the last minute of normal time, they would have been celebrating a giant-killing.

But nonetheless, the performance gave great hope after the disappointment of Saturday's defeat at Rother-ham .

“I wasn’t happy after Saturday, but I am much happier tonight,” Wilder said.

“Having said that, we lost the game so everyone is a bit down, but at least we had a real go and I think everyone here can appreciate the effort of the players.”

United received a standing ovation from their supp-orters at the final whistle, something that Wilder says reflects the way they went about things.

“We are in the enterta-inment business, and I want my teams to put on a show,” he added.

“I want to play football properly and we did that tonight. The fans appreciate how we try and go about things, and while we haven’t got the result we wanted, we have given Cardiff a real scare.

“We gave it a real go though, and now we look forward to Bradford on Saturday where we are all desperate to get our league season up and running.”

Wilder pointed to the introduction of Peter Leven as the catalyst of United’s second-half performance.

“I thought Pete came on and lit us up,” he said.

l Report & pictures: Pages 46-47