OXFORD United are closing in on their longest unbeaten run for a year and head coach Michael Appleton has revealed it has coincided with a change in his leadership style.

It is a month since the U’s boss ‘drew a line in the sand’ after a miserable defeat at Shrewsbury Town.

During the aftermath, the players and staff held constructive meetings aimed at finding a way to turn around inconsistent results.

Whatever was said appears to have worked.

The U’s are five games unbeaten and if they avoid defeat at home to Oldham Athletic tomorrow, it would be their longest streak since an 11-game sequence 12 months ago.

Now Appleton has lifted the lid a little on what changed for him in the visit to Bisham Abbey.

“We’ve got a young group and they constantly need you to be on top of them,” he said.

“That was the biggest thing I learned from the Bisham stuff, it is a different group to last year and they do need to be managed slightly differently.

“I’ve taken a more aggressive stance with them over the last few weeks, probably because they’ve come from an environment where they’ve been told (what to do).”

On reflection, Appleton felt ‘assertive’ was a better description than ‘aggressive’.

Whatever the definition, it is clear the group require more guidance than last season, when a senior core were given the responsibility to find solutions themselves.

Appleton said: “It’s not my style and I don’t need to get in their faces.

“We’ve got a group who need me to be more like a general, rather than someone who says ‘you take ownership and I’ll help you through it’.

“I don’t think this lot are ready for that now, they need someone to say ‘this is what we’re going to do and this is how we’re going to do it’.”

A return of seven points from the three Sky Bet League One games in the unbeaten run has lifted the U’s up six places to 14th.

But the congested pack means they are just three points away from the top six ahead of a run of games against teams below them.

Appleton is fully aware his side’s worst results this season have tended to come in games where they were fancied to win.

But the U’s boss, who turned 41 last Sunday, also knows if the new-found form can continue, a golden opportunity is available.

He said: “We’ve not been great this year when we’ve been favourites.

“We need to address that and make sure we treat Oldham with the same attitude as we would if we were playing one of the top six.

“It’s a league where if take your foot off the gas slightly and expect to win, you’ll get turned over.

“That makes it more exciting, because I don’t think it’s going to be a league where things get sorted early.

“This could go right to the end in terms of who finishes in the top two and the four below them.

“Somewhere along the line a couple of teams will go on a hell of a run and grasp the fact there is an opportunity because everyone else can beat each other.

“We go into this block (of five games) knowing if it’s a good one it will really set up the latter part of the season.”