Micky Mellon described being the manager to lead Oldham Athletic back into the Football League as “very exciting”, and he wants that sentiment to be matched among supporters.
“Be excited,” he said in a message to fans ahead of Saturday’s League Two opener.
“You’ve waited a long time for it. Be excited. I know your expectations will be high, they always are. I can deal with that, it’s no problem. As long as they’re fair and they support the group, even in the tough times – that’s when we’ll probably need you the most.
“The supporters here create so much energy about the place, and we’ve seen the power of supporters’ performance a lot last season but the power of support (in the play-offs) undoubtedly drove the players to different levels that we all saw.
“If we can try to hit that again it will be some place to perform in front of.
“We all want to win games and play well.
“Let’s go and be excited that we’re back where we should be, but we want to keep pushing on.”
Latics mark their return to League Two with a tough opening day assignment away to title favourites MK Dons on Saturday (kick-off 3pm).
But while Oldham’s pre-season has been shorter than most, given their last game of last season was the triumphant National League play-off final at Wembley just two months ago today, Mellon insists they are ready for the challenge this weekend and beyond.
“We very quickly got re-focused a while ago, it’s not just something you’re going to switch on now. As soon as pre-season started for the players were pretty much put back on track then.
“For us as staff, very quickly after the Wembley final we took a bit of time to enjoy ourselves and have holidays but when we came back from that we focused right back on it again.
“It’s very exciting. It’s good to go through pre-season and of course to get promotion and we got into a season in a new division.
“I’m very pleased with the recruitment. We’ve brought in some new faces which can sometimes add that bit of energy into the group, and I’m looking forward to working with them as the games tick over and see how far they can take us.
“It will be a continual building job, a continual improvement job and the first learning curve that we’ll get will be on Saturday.”
And Mellon is not fazed by coming up against the league favourites.
“We’re not going down there just to take part, we’re going down there to try to win a game,” he said.
“Everybody goes on about the National League teams can step up and compete but the question is can you compete over 46 games at a new intensity that you will face every week, not just maybe in 10 games. You will get it every week and every game will be well fought, right to the very end, and that will be the challenge.
“Everybody will be fit, well organised, focused, motivated. And that’s what we’ll be trying to achieve, that level of consistency over 46 games.”
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