Baptiste says himself that was his ‘best performance as a professional’, running the show in the middle of the park with Jack Wilshere and Carlos Sanchez both coming out second best.
He believes he has ‘put his name back out there’ after a number of injury setbacks, but in truth he’s never been short of admirers.
talkSPORT.com understands that Premier League trio Newcastle, Bournemouth and Southampton are closely monitoring the youngster.
There is also interest in his services from the Championship, most notably from Derby, West Brom and Brentford.
The U’s face reigning Premier League champions Manchester City – live on the talkSPORT App – in the quarter-finals, and they’re a side all too familiar to Baptiste as he captained Oxford for the first time against Pep Guardiola’s men in the same competition last season.
Baptiste, now 21, was a breakthrough star at the start of last season, before the talented midfielder’s rise was cut short by injury last October – a recurrent theme in his fledging career to date.
Surgery on a dislocated shoulder saw him then sidelined then for more than two months, only for him to rupture an anterior cruciate ligament ten minutes into his first-team return.
Baptiste had come on as a substitute for Karl Robinson’s side in the closing stages of an FA Cup third round tie at Brentford in January before suffering the devastating blow.
Ironically, prior to that fixture talkSPORT can reveal a move had been agreed, in principle, for Baptiste to join the Bees, only for the deal to be scuppered owing to the severity of the injury.
After nearly eight months out Baptiste was back in action for Oxford at the end of August in a Carabao Cup tie against Millwall.
After featuring regularly for the U’s in the immediate months after that a groin injury then ruled him out for the entirety of November, with Baptiste making a timely return in a 1-0 defeat against MK Dons at the weekend.
So, how has the former Reading trainee dealt with these constant setbacks, particularly the cruciate ligament injury, with his stop-start professional career still very much in its infancy stages.
“I was pretty down for a good week after, I can’t lie,” he told talkSPORT.com.
“But I thought after that period I knew I needed to pick myself up and go again. Feeling sorry for myself wasn’t going to help the situation.
“From getting injured in October and then coming back and getting injured a matter of minutes upon my return was just unbelievable, really. I couldn’t believe it.
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