Kane Ferdinand: 'The margins were tight but Oxford United made us pay'

Kane Ferdinand gave the Magpies some much-needed steel in midfield against Oxford United on Saturday, but it wasn’t quite enough to prevent the side bowing out of the FA Cup at the first-round stage once again.

United have reached the first round in seven of the past nine seasons but have gone no further, and you have to go back 137 years to find the last time the Magpies celebrated seeing their name in hat for the second-round proper.

That run of first round exits continued at the Kassam Stadium at the weekend, but it wasn’t for a lack of effort against Liam Manning’s League 1 high-flyers.

With Ferdinand back in his central midfield role for the first time in five weeks, the Magpies gave as good as they got from their hosts, but the only discernible difference in quality came in the two penalty areas, with Billy Bodin clinically taking the two opportunities which came his way and Maidenhead spurning the chances which fell their way.

Afterwards, Ferdinand admitted it felt good to be back playing and contributing to a creditable Magpies performance, however, there was also disappointment that they couldn’t quite pull off an FA Cup shock.

He said: “I thought we dug in quite well. We were unfortunate to fall behind fairly early on. They had a bit of good play and managed to score the goal, but after that we reacted well. We could have scored a couple in the first half, and we came out strongly in the second half as well.

“If I’m being honest, we probably needed a goal then to flip the tie. I think we were a bit unlucky, but we played well.

“Even if we could have got a goal before half-time. Smithy (Reece Smith) has got to the byline a couple of times. I nearly got on the end of a free kick. It’s small margins, but that’s the difference. It’s why they’re in League 1 and why we are where we are. We’ve got to make it count when we get in those situations, and they made it count more than we did.

“I suppose at times (it didn’t look like there were 66 places between the two teams), but there were also times when they played very well. Their first goal was a good bit of play to make it up the pitch from their own corner, but the margins were tight. They made us pay more than we made them pay.

“We can take confidence from this. Ryan (Peters) and Aaron (O’Brien) have said that if we play like that often, we’ll be fine in our league, and I agree. We showed a lot of fight. The quality was there at times. We could have done better when we got in the final third, but we can take a lot of encouragement from that.”

On his return to the side following injury, Ferdinand added: “It’s been a month or five weeks. I felt fine out there. Hopefully, I can play next week as well.”