Marti Cifuentes hails 10-man Leicester’s character in taking a point at Oxford

Leicester head coach Martin Cifuentes was pleased with the character of his team as they battled back with 10 men to earn a 2-2 draw at Oxford – but he was not happy with their first-half showing.

Substitute Ricardo Pereira fired home in the 55th minute to earn the Foxes a point after Oxford had led 2-1 at the break through Will Lankshear and a Boubakary Soumare own goal – with Jordan Ayew on target for City.

Aaron Ramsey was shown a straight red card in the 24th minute for scything down Matt Phillips.

Cifuentes said: “I will never be satisfied with only one point – that’s not in my nature, I want my team to win football games – but obviously it was a difficult scenario after 24 minutes and I’m very pleased after a poor first half with the reaction we showed, and the personality we showed in the second half.

“It was definitely a late tackle from Aaron but I won’t judge here if it was a red card or yellow card, that doesn’t matter.

“What was clear was that it was unfortunately a very difficult game situation for us.

“Aaron was very, very disappointed – we need to now give him a bit of space. He’s a young guy who has come in with a lot of energy and desire. It was unfortunate what happened with him, but I have full belief that he will be an important player for us.

“We were not good at the start of the game anyway, we conceded the first goal, then we had the capacity to score our goal to get into the game again, but I never felt we were getting the flow.

“Then I felt it was important to get into half-time at 1-1 to make the adjustments we needed, and unfortunately we conceded another – we know Oxford are very good at set plays.

“But then it’s important to highlight the personality and the braveness the players had, to ask for the ball and not just sit deep and wait for things to happen.

“And our second goal was a reflection of that.

“In my eyes, Oxford had some long-range shots, but in terms of danger in the box, I felt we were the ones who went closer in the second half.”

Oxford boss Gary Rowett said: “My emotion is one of a bit of frustration – it feels as though we have dropped points – and I don’t want that to cloud all the good bits about today.

“It’s always frustrating when you’ve gone 1-0 up and 2-1 up and they’ve had a man sent off, and you don’t come away with a win.

“But on the back of Coventry where we saw a much-improved performance second half, I thought today we were absolutely excellent first half against a former Premier League side with a lot of Premier League players still there.

“But we made a mistake for the first goal, which gets them back in the game, we go 2-1 up again, with a little bit of fortune, but after a lot of pressure.

“Then it’s just a question of how do you handle the second period of the game?

“They changed formation, tried to play through lots of bodies in the middle, and I think Harry Winks coming on for them and Matty Phillips going off for us made a massive difference to the game and we just lost our way a bit.

“They scored one very good goal, poor from our point of view, and that’s the frustration really because they haven’t had a lot of chances.”