Chis Wilder is expecting a mixed reaction from Oxford United supporters tonight when he returns to the Kassam Stadium for the first time since leaving the club.

His five years in charge came to an end in January last year, with a move to Northampton Town, who were bottom of the Football League.

The two clubs have met twice since then, but both fixtures were at Sixfields.

Wilder has declined to go into detail about his departure in the build-up to those games, but spoke at length when questioned in his press conference yesterday.

And while the Cobblers boss admitted some U’s supporters will remain unhappy about the manner of the exit, he hoped others would look back more favourably.

United

Wilder told the Northampton Chronicle: “I can’t determine or dictate what other people think about me and they might feel a little bit sour the way I left, but you rarely leave a football club on very good terms.

“I’ve got to look at it from a football point of view and if people do that in a sensible way they will look at that period with a decent amount of fondness of what we tried to bring.

“We worked extremely hard to bring success and a bit of enjoyment to that football club at the time.”

Wilder inherited a side in the bottom half of the Conference when he arrived in December 2008.

The long-awaited promotion back to the Football League arrived 18 months later with victory in the play-off final.

Few U’s bosses have delivered such a memorable highlight.

Like many of his critics, Wilder is frustrated with the series of play-off near-misses which followed, but the the Northampton manager looks back on his overall tenure with pride.

He said: “Of course there’s always an expectation level by a certain amount of people that we should have done more.

“I was a little bit disappointed that, maybe on a couple of the campaigns, we should have done a bit more and squeezed into the play-offs.

“But it certainly wasn’t a situation where we should have just jumped out of the league straight away.”

He added: “I’m maybe disappointed with the way it finished, but for the majority of the time it was a fantastic time for myself, the team and the club.”