Cifuentes ‘Satisfied’ With Foxes Reaction

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Cifuentes ‘Satisfied’ With Foxes Reaction

Martí Cifuentes felt Leicester City displayed good character to twice come from behind and claim a 2-2 draw away at Oxford United on Saturday.

2025-09-14T09:00+01:00

by Sam Jones

Published

14 Sep, 2025

Cifuentes ‘Satisfied’ With Foxes Reaction

Martí Cifuentes felt Leicester City displayed good character to twice come from behind and claim a 2-2 draw away at Oxford United on Saturday.

Sam Jones

2025-09-14T09:00+01:00

Cifuentes ‘Satisfied’ With Foxes Reaction

Martí Cifuentes felt Leicester City displayed good character to twice come from behind and claim a 2-2 draw away at Oxford United on Saturday.

Sam Jones

2025-09-14T09:00+01:00

Cifuentes ‘Satisfied’ With Foxes Reaction

Martí Cifuentes felt Leicester City displayed good character to twice come from behind and claim a 2-2 draw away at Oxford United on Saturday.

Sam Jones

2025-09-14T09:00+01:00

Cifuentes ‘Satisfied’ With Foxes Reaction

Martí Cifuentes felt Leicester City displayed good character to twice come from behind and claim a 2-2 draw away at Oxford United on Saturday.

Sam Jones

2025-09-14T09:00+01:00

Ten-man Foxes draw 2-2 against Oxford United in the Sky Bet Championship
Jordan Ayew and substitute Ricardo Pereira scored as City came from behind twice
Manager Martí Cifuentes believes it was a much-improved second-half performance

Jordan Ayew cancelled out Will Lankshear’s early opener within four minutes, but the Foxes were up against it following debutant Aaron Ramsey’s straight red card midway through the first half.

An unfortunate Boubakary Soumaré own goal saw Gary Rowett’s men edge back ahead, though Ricardo Pereira’s strike, just 10 minutes after coming off the bench, ensured City took a share of the spoils back to Leicestershire.

Reflecting on an action-packed Sky Bet Championship contest at Kassam Stadium, Cifuentes believes the point his side earned was well deserved in the end, while there was some disappointment not to claim all three, despite a below-par first 45 minutes.

“We’ll never be satisfied with a point, it doesn’t matter if it’s at home or away,” the 43-year-old told us after full-time. “I want to win football games.

“It was not a good first half, but overall, in a difficult scenario after all the situations that we went through in the first half, I’m satisfied about especially the reaction and the personality that we showed in the second half.

“To get a red card after only 20 minutes is a difficult situation. We need to focus on what we can control and what we can do. In that sense, we need to be better in our performances and [hope] situations like this will not happen again or affect us as much as today.

“That’s probably the main positive that we can take today, that this team showed personality and that they really want to achieve something and they care for each other and all the fans that came here, because it was not easy.

“The first goal, we should have done better, then good personality to immediately react. We didn’t find our flow and suddenly we got the red card and it was important to try and arrive at half-time with it 1-1.

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“We concede a goal in the set play, which we know Oxford is very good at. What I value is that all the team stick together and everybody shows personality. What we showed in possession, for me, it was one team close to getting the victory in the last minutes of the game, and it was us.”

Managing to hurt Oxford more in the second half, battling back soon after the break despite being a man down, it was a first-class team move for the second, with Cifuentes pointing to the importance of every member of the squad during the campaign.

“We were getting too flat from the moment we got Aaron off as a no.10,” City’s Manager analysed. “We felt it was easy to just keep the same shape. Having Stephy [Mavididi] and Abdul [Fatawu], they are usually wingers, but we wanted to try a shape that could perhaps help us get a little bit higher.

“With Winks and Ricardo we know that their quality on the ball is outstanding, so they really helped us to stabilise the game. I’m sad for Bouba [Soumaré] and Stephy because they were doing very well, but we had to take some decisions.

“It was a difficult call for me to make, not only with the 11 starting but who will be on the bench. It’s always a difficult part of being a manager. You feel sad for some players who deserve to get some minutes.

“But it’s a long season and I’m sure that everyone will play their part and as long as we keep this togetherness and understand that everybody can be important through the season, I’m sure that we’re going to have a fantastic squad to use.

The finish from Ricardo, his second in as many games as a substitute, having scored late on against Birmingham City prior to the international break, was an impressive one, too.

“Another goal from him, hopefully he can continue,” the Spaniard added on his captain. “The braveness to play through with the combinations and the quality that we showed, we definitely want to see more of this.

“The goal was brilliant, a fantastic sequence from the whole team, a joy to see and I think that everybody played their part to make sure that the second half was very decent in a game scenario that is never easy.

“The way everybody, the guys from the bench and those who didn’t play, were helping, they were supporting and they were pushing to try and get a positive result. That says a lot about the personality of this group.”

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