Hurzeler: Steele was superb in win over Oxford United

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Albion scored six in their second round tie against Oxford United.

2025-08-27T22:20+01:00

Fabian Hurzeler saw his side cruise to victory at the Kassam Stadium. 📷 Paul Hazlewood.

Fabian Hurzeler said that overall he was feeling positive about Albion's 6-0 win over Oxford United in the Carabao Cup second round, but felt that his side also relied on some outstanding saves from Jason Steele.

What were your key takeaways from the performance today?

FH: I think it's positive. We scored six goals, that's a positive thing. Of course, we were quite sloppy in some moments. It starts with the first action where we gave away an easy pass, so we invited them to score goals in the first half. In the second half we started strong. For the first 70 minutes we played a good game, we created chances. Then again, we had a lot of changes and after the substitutions we lost a bit of structure, but we have a brilliant goalkeeper in Jason.

Overall we have to be positive. We created a lot of chances, we kept a clean sheet with a little bit of luck, with a great goalkeeper. In some moments there was good defending. If you take away the sloppy moments we had a good performance.

A number of competitive debuts. How do you feel Olivier Boscagli and Diego Coppola got on?

Really well, they did their job, they defended well. I think they can't avoid the chance Oxford had because there were mistakes from us. So every time we lost our structure, we defended quite well. So overall it's positive.

You'd want your substitutions to make an impact and they certainly did. You must be pleased with that?

I was very pleased because it's always important for strikers to score goals. It's important for him [Stefanos Tzimas]. He showed in training that he has the ability to score goals from different angles, from different positions. That's why we have him here. He's a good lad, he's a hard worker. So I am very pleased that he had this debut.

Tommy Watson also scored, it must be a good headache to have all these options available?

Of course, we now have a little bit more flexibility, but tonight was still far away from a Premier League game. I think they came into game after three league defeats, so we have to factor that in. But it's important. It was a good start for them [the debutants], but it's only a first step. We have to take several steps with them so that they're ready for Premier League football, that they're ready to help us, but they need to use every moment in the journey. They need to use every game they get and then I'm sure long term that they can help us.

How important were your leaders such as James Milner and Jason Steele tonight?

I always emphasise how important leaders are for me and they are two great leaders on and off the pitch. They're not only great leaders, but they're also great players.

They showed it today. So I am very pleased with their performance, especially Jason, he made a lot of great saves. I am very happy for him. He's a great goalkeeper. I always say we are very, very lucky to have such a good number two in our goal.