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Taking four points in a week off two teams that we painfully failed to beat last season? One of whom we’ve failed to beat in four previous attempts? That’s just what Oldham do now.
It was far from a festival of football last Saturday, perhaps best demonstrated by the fact that the highlights don’t appear to show any action from the first half at all, although kudos to the Wealdstone commentary team for correctly identifying Uchegbulam as “a dangerous customer”. Both Manny Monthe and Micky Mellon spoke about the difficult conditions after the game – long grass, dry/sticky pitch, Monthe talking about how unbearably hot it was while wearing a hoodie and a gilet.
The pre-season fitness training showed in the later stages of the game, and we got our reward in the 85th minute. Fondop did great work down the right before playing a clever one-two with Kay, then crossed it into the box for Charsley to score with a brilliant (if bizarre) diving looping header, which the Wealdstone keeper is almost certainly still having nightmares about.
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We then had to endure 12 minutes’ injury time due to an earlier stoppage when a fan took ill, and obviously we wish them all the best, but it was Wealdstone who had lost their nerve, and their hopes of getting back into the game were further dented when they were reduced to 10 men in the 95th minute. I don’t know who needs to hear this, but fouling an attacking player when they’re clean through on goal has always been a red card. This isn’t like the handball rule, where they tried to simplify the law by removing the need for it to be deliberate and now footballers are supposed to play with their hands behind their backs and it’s unfair and everyone hates it; or how, in the Premier League, they’ve completely lost sight of what the purpose of the offside rule is and goals are being ruled out by VAR because the line shows the attacking player’s eyebrows were a millimetre ahead of the last defender. Everyone agrees that fouling someone clean through on goal is a red card. This is wholly, entirely uncontroversial.
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We hung on, and I hear Kitching should gave made it 2-0 in injury time. We didn’t make the journey down south, we were in Liverpool for the day. I wonder what the people in the Pumphouse at the Albert Dock made of me yelling “YES! WE’VE FINALLY BEAT WEALDSTONE!”. If they were Evertonians, they were probably jealous.
A hoodoo finally laid to rest at the fifth time of trying, then. Mellon was delighted (well, as delighted as he gets) with the win, hailing the players’ strength, fitness, and fighting attitude, but saved his highest praise for the fans for recognising how difficult the conditions were and not getting on the players’ backs: “you showed your football knowledge”.
Fylde have been another bogey team for us (God how depressing a sentence is that), and our home game against them on Tuesday was always likely to be a tougher test. We were definitely the better team though – we kept Nick Haughton fairly quiet, and Uchegbulam was brilliant again. Which made it all the more annoying when Fylde took the lead against the run of play. We switched off at a corner and Riley, unmarked outside the area, scored with a brilliant finish into the top right corner.
We should have had a penalty before half time when Winterbottom absolutely cleaned Raglan out with a double-fisted punch to the head. Yes, he was going for the ball, yes, it’s a contact sport, but you’re still not allowed to punch someone in the head. Which Winterbottom clearly knew, because he went down clutching his face, despite no-one fucking touching him. Fondop, never far from the red mist, was rightly furious, and if he’d taken a swing at the Fylde keeper on the way off the pitch at half-time, I’d have paid his fine myself.
Being at the match, we missed what may have been the best entertainment of the evening, when Uncle Roy left his microphone on at the break, and Latics Player listeners were treated to exclusive news about Norwood’s injury and Roy’s thought on Andy Burnham. Most people thought it was hilarious; the ringleader of the Irrelevant Element has apparently contacted Andy Burnham’s office. Totally normal behaviour.
I quite like Burno, meself. I don’t agree with him on everything, but he seems a decent principled bloke. And, during the 2019 general election campaign, he liked my tweet saying “Jeremy Corbyn will abolish VAR and send Mike Dean to a re education camp on Anglesey. Vote Labour.” Which I’m taking as an endorsement of the policy.
In the second half, Fylde doubled up on Uchegbulam which blunted the threat down the left a little, but the danger with double-marking one player is that it tends to leave another player free. At first glance, you might look at Monthe and think, “ah yes, a classic man mountain of a centre half”. Then you see him sprinting down the left, and you realise that he’s also a rather impressive as a winger. Then he smashes in a fucking peach of a low shot from 30 yards, and you realise that he can do pretty much whatever he likes. What a signing he’s turning out to be. Hudson said after the game that he’s been telling Monthe in training to shoot more, and commended his defensive qualities: “he’s just a leader, isn’t he? He’s like a brick wall, nothing gets through him.”
We passed it well, we always looked positive, we dominated the game, but the winner wouldn’t come. Fondop didn’t quite have his shooting boots on (maybe he should have borrowed Hudson’s again), and we had to settle for a point. Tell you what, though, being disappointed with only drawing against Fylde is a sight better than being utterly embarrassed by them. As Mellon pointed out after the game, Fylde were miles better than us last year. Being disappointed with only taking 7 points from 9 is a hell of a lot better than being utterly humiliated at the league’s crisis club on the opening day and having to play catch up.
We finally announced the arrival of Callum Dolan on loan from Fleetwood yesterday. Everyone remembers why he left us, but he’s served his time, he says he’s got his head straight now, and with his background in working with kids who’ve been excluded from mainstream education, Mellon’s probably better qualified than most to get the best out of him. And, I shouldn’t need to point this out, but signing someone who did time in a young offenders’ institution for dangerous driving is very different to trying to sign someone who’s on the sex offenders’ register.
So far, so good. This weekend is going to be another big test – trips to southern leisure centres are always tricky, and Gateshead have started the season very strongly. So have we, though, and our squad should be capable of coping with two tough games in three days. That’s just what Oldham do now. We just win games of football. KTMFF.
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Written by Arlene Finnigan
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