PEOPLE asked me after our win over MIllwall how much we had been practising penalties.

The honest answer is not at all.

Obviously James Henry is our regular taker and he does practice them regularly.

Sometimes you see the lads stay behind and have a competition for a bit of fun after training.

But there hadn’t been any special drills ahead of our cup game and, if I’m honest, after 85 minutes the thought of who was going to take penalties wasn’t at the front of my mind!

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We were 2-0 down at the point and then Mark Sykes got us a goal back before ‘Jamo’ levelled things in injury time.

It was at THAT point that I started thinking about who would take them!

We are fortunate in this squad to have a lot of players with really good technique and plenty of character.

With the momentum behind us, I was pretty confident.

You always ask who fancies taking one and we had no shortage of volunteers.

The only thing we said was that Jamo didn’t take the first one – he had just taken one a couple of minutes earlier so it was sensible to hold him back a little.

Our analysis team talked with Simon Eastwood on where the Millwall players tended to take their penalties, and then we were off.

Credit to everyone who took them and particularly John Mousinho who strikes a mean penalty – that’s three he’s scored, an important one for us in the league and two in shoot-outs.

It sets us up nicely for a home game against West Ham, which I am sure will be a sell out.

I suspect it made the result that much worse for the Millwall fans who missed out on a game against their big rivals!

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Financially we don’t budget for cup games so it will be a bonus for us.

And a midweek game under the lights always seems to bring out the best in Oxford United, so hopefully we can make it a night for the fans to remember for years.

Right now though, it is totally irrelevant.

We welcome Coventry City today and we need to start winning in the league again.

We have been playing well enough but not getting results so let’s focus all our energy on today and make sure we get another positive result.

WE made a new signing this week – but I don’t know if he will ever play for the first team.

Kash Siddiqi is an amazing young man who believes that football can break down barriers.

He is right and Football for Peace, which he helped found, is an organisation we are pleased to be involved with.

Kash will work in partnership with the club and also help us try to stamp out discrimination within the game.

As a pioneering Asian footballer he has unbelievable contacts and a true passion which we have found inspiring.

He will train with Chris Allen and our under 23s for a week or two, but the plan is for him to go on loan to an Indian team and combine that with his off the pitch work for us.

I applaud Tiger and the board for this initiative and everyone at the club will give Kash our full support as he tries to remind people that football really can be the beautiful game for all.