There will be something familiar about the opposition when Jamie Mackie lines up for Oxford United in the Carabao Cup quarter-final on Wednesday. He knows all about facing Manchester City as he was in the Queens Park Rangers side that played in the critical final game of the 2012 season.

Indeed, he scored that day to put the visitors ahead and temporarily derail City’s title surge, before a fingernail-threatening injury time that saw a City equaliser and then the goal by Sergio Aguero that secured a historic victory and in the process sent the commentator Martin Tyler doolally.

“It sounds odd, but seeing them winning the trophy wasn’t the thing that sticks in my mind,” says Mackie of that game, as he sits in Oxford’s expansive new training centre just behind the city’s car factory where Minis are built.

“It was that we had stayed in the Premier League. The two teams had very different sort of goals within the same game. And both of us achieved them.”

It won’t be like that at the Kassam Stadium on Wednesday. Then there can only be one winner. City will be looking to retain the trophy they won as part of a domestic treble last season, while League One Oxford will be hoping to deliver the most unlikely upset. It was not something they managed in 2018, when the two clubs met in the third round of the competition, and City won 3-0. But Mackie is convinced there is much his team can learn from that experience.