Micky Mellon admitted Oldham Athletic’s game at Fleetwood Town could have gone either way, but admitted it would have been cruel had Latics lost.

Mellon’s men registered 22 shots against the Scot’s old club, and were denied a late winner by the woodwork.

But not enough of Latics’ chances were on target, and Mat Hudson had to be at his best to deny Fleetwood snatching all three points in stoppage time.

“I think without a shadow of a doubt we could have won, but I think with a bit of poor game management we could have lost it, and that would have been an almighty kick in the proverbials. But that’s how football can be, we can’t knock off like that and we did and we were fortunate,” said Mellon.

“Mat’s made a good save and then the boy following up would be disappointed he doesn’t put it in. But I think on the balance pretty much after Fleetwood scored and pretty much most or all of the second half we were the ones in the ascendency.

“There were enough opportunities away from home for us to be disappointed that we don’t get the win, that’s for sure. But I will acknowledge that at the end through a bit of poor organisation we could have lost it, and that would have been a sore one.

“But we’ve done well since the Swindon game when we acknowledged to everyone that we were poor. The last two away games we’ve given a really good account of ourselves, and I must say the supporters were magnificent. I’m just gutted that we couldn’t send them away with a win; gutted because they were great all day. But we’re fighting and we’ll keep going.”

Latics suffered their first defeat of the season at home to Swindon Town last weekend but have responded with back-to-back draws, at Bristol Rovers in midweek and away to Fleetwood, where Reagan Ogle cancelled out Ched Evans’ opener before the break – with both goals coming from corners.

“It’s been a decent week for us with two good results, and we’ll move on to next week,” said Mellon, who was frustrated by the manner in which they trailed at a sweltering Highbury Stadium this afternoon.

“It’s a rubbish goal to give away and again in the first 10-15 minutes. We have said to everybody we want to stop doing that, and the goal that we gave away was just nonsense, it’s just poor. There’s no getting away from that. We have to take responsibility for that and say that’s not good enough.

“The ball’s ended up in the six-yard box and bounced a few inches off the floor. We’ve got to be dealing with that because there were no other contacts. It came in at that height we should be defending that better.

“At any level of football you’d be disappointed with that. But we reacted and we responded and we got ourselves back into it again.”

Mike Fondop had two quickfire first-half efforts ruled out – the first for handball and the second for offside, before a third was ruled out in the second half for a foul in the build-up.

“We had a couple of goals chalked off. I don’t know about the Mike Fondop (handball), I’m miles away. But the linesman gave it and he’s miles away too so I’m not sure how he can see it from there, because you can’t gamble in those moments as a linesman,” Mellon continued.

“But we respect the point, we worked hard, it was a roasting hot day and both sets of players ran themselves to a standstill at the end.

“It was a deserved equaliser.

“I’m being really respectful because I’m a Fleetwood guy, I was here a long time, and I like their management so I’m going to be really respectful, but I think anybody coming here today would have to say Oldham were the better team and probably if anyone was going to win it, it was going to be Oldham, so that’s a positive.

“But we could have blown our heads off with that organisation at the back when we were attacking. You’ve got to shut the back door and not leave units and we were wide open. But we can count ourselves very unlucky, if Kian scores that’s the winner.

“But the boys put a good shift in.”

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