RYAN Ledson acknowledged he and the rest of Oxford United’s young central midfield need to work out a better way of dealing with being man-marked.

The 20-year-old shone alongside Joe Rothwell and Jack Payne, who are both 22, as the U’s made a good start to the season.

But the trio have been stifled in the last two games against Blackpool and Walsall’s five-man midfields.

United have lost both games and Ledson, who scored from the penalty spot in Saturday’s 2-1 defeat to Walsall, is well aware they need to find ways to combat the problem.

He said: “I think if teams want to try to do that to us we need to rotate more in the midfield to try to get on the ball and help the centre halves.

“We’re still young players learning the game.

“If people want to man-mark us, then we’ll have to show different angles.

“The defenders have to trust us to give us the ball, even if we’ve got a marker behind us. We’ll learn from it.

“We’ll talk about it in training and come up with a solution.”

Ledson also revealed United’s players had seen a fiercer side to boss Pep Clotet after the game than at any other time this season.

He said: “It was stern, but we needed it.

“You can’t expect to start (playing) after two goals and think it was right.”

He added: “I think we now need to go back to the basics – we need to start keeping clean sheets and start working hard for each other.

“We can’t just come and play the football that we want, we have to earn the right.”