DES Buckingham doesn’t want his players to move on from Oxford United’s recent 5-0 win against Peterborough United when the sides meet again tonight in the Sky Bet League One play-offs.

The U’s thrashed the Posh at Grenoble Road on April 13, with a Mark Harris penalty followed up by Josh Murphy, a Ruben Rodrigues brace, and a late Billy Bodin effort.

As the sides prepare to meet again, in the first leg of their play-off semi-final, United head coach Buckingham wants his players to keep the learnings from the recent meeting, but also be realistic about such a scoreline happening again.

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He said: “You don’t want people to forget that, and it’s the same that you don’t want people to forget the 5-0 at Bolton. That plays a really important learning part for us.

“That most recent one against Peterborough, we’d been playing really good football and played some teams down the bottom, and got some really good scores.

“That game allowed the players to see that they’re more than capable of playing that type of football against a very good team with very good players.

“We don’t want them to forget that, we want them to keep that. What we also need to do is be realistic.

“That was a very good day for everybody, but the chances of that happening again on Saturday are very different.

“We take the learnings from it, the good learnings, as that reinforces what we’re trying to do here.”

Buckingham added: “I’m really excited, as the playing group are, and everyone associated with this club.

“It’s something we’ve worked extremely hard for. You look at where the club was 12 months ago, celebrating staying in the league, and now we’ve put ourselves in a position to try and get out the league.

“To finish in the play-offs after what has been a very up and down season, in terms of challenges and changes, and then we arrived at a very good point in the season, in a good space, playing some really good football, and with momentum behind us.

“It’s about being clear on what we do, and how we do it. We’re at home, we’ve got a full house, and we’ll do everything we can to play the game we want to, but we know we’re up against a very good Peterborough side, who will make it very difficult for us.”

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The Posh boast an impressive forward line, and have four players in double digits for league goals this season. Ephron Mason-Clark, Kwame Poku, Ricky-Jade Jones and Joel Randall have all scored 10 or more league goals this campaign.

Buckingham said: “We know the dangers of that front three, or front four, regardless of who starts or who comes on.

“We’ve been pretty solid ourselves defensively. It’s important going into the game that when we don’t have the ball, that we defend as well as we did in that last game, to try and restrict what we know will be a very dangerous front line.”