‘Don’t give our rivals a hand’

Manager Mellon urges Latics fans to stick with team

By Mark Rooney

PLEA: Oldham manager Micky Mellon

MICKY MELLON has pleaded with Oldham Athletic fans to get behind the team at Boundary Park next season – insisting their negativity is encouraging opposing teams.

The Latics managed just six home wins in the league last season – one of the worst home records in the National League – and contributed to Mellon’s side missing out on the play-off places.

Addressing over 200 supporters at the club’s Fans Forum on Tuesday night, Mellon said: “We (the management and coaching team) come here and create the team and we have to give you something that you want to be proud of. I get that.

“Opposition managers, in their team talks and in their tactics, are telling their players as they prepare to step out onto the Boundary Park pitch, ‘If you keep Oldham quiet for 15 minutes and you give them nothing, the fans will turn on them and they will go under’.

Quiet

“It isn’t criticism from me. It’s just a fact that we’ve been made aware of from opposing managers and coaches. Every club that we speak to is saying ‘you know what we did Micky, we kept you quiet because the crowd will turn on your team’.

“I watch the games like you and I would be disappointed as well but it would be wrong of me not to say that opposing teams are using this now for their benefit. I know it is difficult – you all want success.”

And he joked: “I have to watch it as well… you are not alone!”

In a bid to appease the supporters, Mellon said: “I would just ask that when you come to watch us, you maybe have the attitude that they are using you against us now and it has become common knowledge that the Oldham fans are so frustrated, so disappointed, that if you keep them quiet early on, they will turn on the players and make it easy for them. I repeat, not criticism just facts.

“Our responsibility is to make sure that as we build this team, we are all united, we all want the same thing and that is something that you can help us with.”

Mellon also defended his decision to order his squad in for training on Christmas Day last season, causing public condemnation among certain members of his squad.

The former Tranmere boss, 52, added: “If you do not want to do the things that are necessary in order to be a proper footballer to win games of football for us at Oldham and making sacrifices that are necessary to get what fans deserve, and, when you have a 74-year-old chairman (Frank Rothwell) rowing across the Atlantic this Christmas, I don’t think it is too difficult for you to spend 45 minutes on Christmas morning to get ready for a Boxing Day game.”