After loan spells from Everton the midfielder is pleased to have found a proper home and finally to feel part of a team as his side face Swansea in the FA Cup

In the summer of 2013 John Lundstram started England’s opening match at the Under-20 World Cup alongside Ross Barkley, Harry Kane and Eric Dier, with John Stones on the bench. Last Sunday, while the other four players contested the Premier League match between Everton and Tottenham Hotspur, Lundstram was pursuing his football education at Oxford United, having turned down a new contract at Everton in the summer. “It was the best decision I ever made,” says the 21-year-old midfielder who aims to show on Sunday, when Oxford host Swansea City in the third round of the FA Cup, that he has what it takes to graduate back to the elite.

Lundstram was nominated for the League Two player-of-the-month award for December and feels that his career is finally taking flight. It is doing so partially because he has learned to exert more control over the direction he takes.

In 2013 he went to the World Cup on the back of impressive performances as a loanee at Doncaster Rovers, whom he helped to the League One title, and with high hopes of breaking into the Everton first team. But that was also the summer in which Roberto Martínez arrived at Goodison Park to replace David Moyes, under whom Lundstram had seemed poised to make a breakthrough.

“When David Moyes was at Everton I was in the squad and with the first team and doing really well but as soon as he left it just wasn’t the same for me,” says Lundstram without bitterness. “It’s a game of opinions and I wasn’t involved in the first team as much as I’d have liked under Martínez. I was meant to go on a pre-season tour with the first team when I came back from Doncaster and then, a couple of days before that, I got taken off the squad list to go and I was never told why. That knocked my confidence a bit and little things like that set me back a bit. Then I had to go on loan to Yeovil.”

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Yeovil were bottom of the Championship and their style did not suit a player whose main quality is his expansive passing. “It wasn’t the right club because we never had the ball,” he says, raising an issue that affects many young players’ development: in three years as a professional at Everton he went to five different clubs on loan and wishes he had been more assertive about his moves. “If I had my time again, I’d have more say in where I went and would say ‘no’ to some things. But I was just trying to please the manager and saying ‘yes, yes, yes’ all the time.”

When his contract expired at Goodison last summer Everton offered him a six-month deal but this time he did say no. “I didn’t feel it was worth wasting any more time, so I just wanted to get out there and start playing first-team football regularly – and not on loan for once. It definitely makes a difference being permanent. You just feel much more part of things.”

Lundstram is certainly a crucial part of an Oxford team that stands third in League Two. Liam Sercombe and Kemar Roofe tend to score the goals but Lundstram usually conducts the attacking. “I just want to get on the ball as much as I can,” he says.

That is a common aim throughout the team, which is why Swansea are fitting opponents: since being taken over by the businessman Darryl Eales in 2014, Oxford have made no secret of their ambition to emulate the Welsh club by ascending from the bottom league to the top while playing a slick, possession-based style. “There are a couple more teams in League Two who also want to play that way but I believe we’re the best at it,” says Lundstram.

Promotion is this season’s main aim and, since Oxford do not have an enormous squad, it will be a challenge to continue competing on all fronts. Indeed, they go into the Swansea game with their manager, Michael Appleton, grappling with the difficult issue of whether to rest players for Thursday’s first leg of the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy area final against Millwall – victory in that tie would secure a rare Wembley appearance for Oxford.

“It’s well documented how important the promotion push is but all the lads want to get to Wembley as well so the JPT is massive for us,” says Lundstram, who adds that the Swansea match is “a no-pressure game really”. It is, however, a match in which the players yearn to make a statement.

“A lot of the lads here are good enough to play at the highest level and I think everyone’s mindset is we’re going to go out and prove how good we all are,” says Lundstram. In a season in which Jamie Vardy and Dele Alli have shown that real talent can be found in the lower leagues, Oxford want to provide further evidence. “With all the money involved in the Premier League it’s tough for a young English lad to come in but there are definitely some gems in the Football League who could play at the top,” says Lundstram. “It’s just about getting the chance.”

On Sunday Lundstram and his team-mates have a chance to make their point. Mind you, while watching the draw Lundstram hoped he would be given an opportunity to make it against someone else: “I was clutching the couch hoping for it to be Everton and then I definitely would have had something to prove,” he says with a benign laugh. “But this is a great tie – and, if we get through, I’ll be begging for Everton.”