Athletic: You got to know when to Oldham and when to fold em

Words: Arlene Finnigan

Images: Ed Stanley

There were a few big clashes on this particular weekend – Man Utd vs Liverpool, Rangers vs Celtic – but one grudge match may have escaped your attention. The 409 Bus Derby. El Flatcapico. Oldham vs Rochdale.

Some Oldham fans resent the Rochdale game being classed as a Greater Manchester derby. For one thing, many of us consider ourselves Lancastrians, not Mancs. For another, some of us are old enough to remember the halcyon Premier League days when our local rivals were Man Utd and Man City. A lot has happened since then.

In 2022, we managed to get rid of the unwanted accolade of being the Football League club who had gone the longest without a trophy or promotion to celebrate, by losing our League status. Latics had suffered years of decline since our heyday in the 1990s, but under previous owner Abdallah Lemsagam we went into freefall.

There were reports of bills being unpaid, wages being paid late and a revolving door recruitment policy, both on and off the pitch. Paul Scholes resigned as manager after just 31 days, saying “it unfortunately became clear I would not be able to operate as I intended and was led to believe”.

Crowds fell as fans either boycotted or lost interest, and in October 2019 an independent fans’ group called Push The Boundary was formed “to try to safeguard the club in any way possible”. They initially sought open dialogue with Lemsagam to raise fans’ concerns, but when none was forthcoming, they called for a boycott on spending money in the ground, and later called for fans to boycott matches.

A protest march down Sheepfoot Lane took place before the game vs Hartlepool in September 2021, featuring people in clown outfits carrying a coffin. Others got creative in letting their feelings known - the match against Accrington the previous month had been halted by tennis balls being thrown onto the pitch.

By January 2022, the owner was under increasing pressure. The protests were gaining momentum, the Oldham Athletic Supporters’ Foundation (who own 3% of the club) were becoming increasingly critical of him, and the team were rooted to the bottom of the League.

Lemsagam announced that he was putting the club up for sale, and later in the month appointed fans’ favourite John Sheridan as head coach for a sixth time in a desperate attempt to avoid relegation. For a while, the team’s fortunes turned around, and in less than a month we moved out of the relegation places. Sadly, the Shezurrection couldn’t be sustained.

At 2-1 down in the 79th minute of Oldham’s match v Salford on 23rd April 2022 – a result which would ultimately confirm our relegation – fans took to the pitch with a banner stating ‘GET OUT OF OUR CLUB’ and walked towards the Main Stand where the absent club directors should have been.

It turned out to be a suitably farcical end to our 115 year stay in the Football League. It was announced over the tannoy that the match had been abandoned, and we made our way, dejectedly, to the bar in the Oldham Event Centre at the back of the Joe Royle stand.

We assumed the result would stand and our fate was confirmed. We could only laugh in disbelief when the news filtered through at 6.30pm that the remaining 11 minutes were going to be played out behind closed doors.

The future looked bleak, and the club seemed more concerned with criticising their own supporters than with trying to repair the damage to the sinking ship. Former club director Barry Owen’s line about “rebel groups” had unintended consequences.

He was out of touch enough to think that was a cutting insult, but it made us sound impossibly cool. We were Public Enemy. We were James Dean. We were the Rebel Alliance, and we were not going to allow the Galactic Empire to run our club into oblivion. T-shirts emblazoned with ‘REBEL SCUM’ were hastily printed and quickly sold out.

Push the Boundary and the Supporters Foundation continued to put pressure on Lemsagam to sell the club and agreed to work together to raise money to try to buy Boundary Park on behalf of the fans in an attempt to safeguard the club.

We were all braced for things to get much worse, though, and for it to take a long time for things to get any better. We were all too aware that the club was a less attractive prospect to potential buyers in the National League, and that any new owner would be taking on a major rebuilding project.

©Ed Stanley/ Terrace Edition. Oldham Athletic.

To complicate matters further, Boundary Park wasn’t owned by Oldham Athletic. It was owned by Brass Bank, a company set up by former club owners Simon Blitz and Danny Gazal.

We knew that the court case could drag on for months, if not years. We had to be prepared for a long miserable slog, and the possibility of liquidation and having to form a phoenix club hung over us.

Imagine how stunned and delighted we were, then, when the club announced on June 30th 2022 that Oldham Athletic and Boundary Park were both to be sold to a “longstanding successful local business”, coming under single ownership, and that the funds were in place and the aim was to complete the sale in less than four weeks.

On July 28th, the Rothwell family, owners of Manchester Cabins, were unveiled as Oldham Athletic’s new owners in a press conference at the Oldham Event Centre, with Frank Rothwell, in his trademark flat cap, drinking a pint of bitter, taking over as chairman.

Legendary former manager Joe Royle was also joining the board, along with his son Darren. After the press conference, Frank Rothwell came to address the delighted fans outside and gave us an impromptu rendition of The Wanderer.

I’m sure winning the Champions League is very nice, but our noisy neighbours will never know the joy of drinking champagne in a car park while a septuagenarian sings a Dion and the Belmonts song to you.

No one was ever in any doubt about what a huge job the new owners had on their hands. David Unsworth was appointed manager in September 2022 and given the task of overhauling the footballing infrastructure at the club, with ambitious talk of setting up a reserve team, changing the recruitment processes and creating pathways for players to progress from the youth team to the first team.

He frequently pleaded for patience from fans after disappointing results, stressing that it was a long term project. It was a big ask. As 2022 drew to a close, we were 23rd in the National League, and patience was wearing thin. The board were keen to break from the short-term hire-and-fire policy of the past, however, and wanted to give Unsworth every chance to succeed.

Their faith in Unsworth appeared to be well placed as our form gradually turned around in the second half of the season. We eventually finished 12th, our first top half finish since 2009, and were unbeaten in our last 6 games. It wasn’t pretty to watch; it was often dull and frustrating. But we were hopeful that we’d continue our good form into the next season.

Unsworth couldn’t complain that the board didn’t back him. A new £1m pitch was laid at Boundary Park in the summer of 2023, and we assembled a squad that looked impressive and seemed like a great statement of intent.

Many eyebrows were raised when James Norwood signed from Barnsley, choosing to drop into non-league football from League One. The pre-season optimism quickly evaporated in our first game of the season, though. We were humiliated in a 4-0 defeat at Southend, whose financial woes meant their players had hardly trained together prior to the season opener. It was a stunningly bad performance, and things didn’t improve.

A year into the long term rebuilding project, Unsworth was sacked, having picked up just seven points from a possible 27 and with the team third from bottom of the league. With horrible symmetry, his last game, like his first, was a 3-0 defeat at Bromley.

Micky Mellon was unveiled as Unsworth’s replacement on October 13th. A hugely experienced manager with five promotions on his CV, many felt we probably should have appointed him in the first place rather than taking a chance on someone whose previous coaching experience was almost entirely at under-23 level.

Mellon started well enough with a 1-0 win at Altrincham in the FA Cup and a 4-3 victory at Rochdale in the league, but things haven’t quite gone smoothly since then.

The board have backed him as they backed Unsworth, signing yet more new players in a bid to make the play offs. A great run in December and January looked to have put us in a great position. The Kidderminster game on February 24th would have been a great opportunity to consolidate that. It was Frank Rothwell’s homecoming party after he rowed the Atlantic solo, breaking his own record as the oldest person to do so, to raise money for Alzheimer’s Research UK, and the game was a sellout.

And we put in an utterly dismal performance on the pitch and lost 2-1, failed to win a single game in the whole of March, and slumped to ninth in the table. Such is the life of an Oldham supporter.

Our neighbours Rochdale have had their own problems, of course. For years, they prided themselves on being a fan-owned club and fought off an attempted hostile takeover by Morton House MGT in 2022. Following their relegation to the National League, though, it became clear that their model for running the club was no longer viable. They appear to have found their own local saviours and look close to being taken over by the Ogden family. Off the pitch, at least, I wish them the best of luck.

On the pitch, the big glamour Lancashire derby was something of a damp squib. El Crapico, if you will. Oldham took the lead early on with a lovely finish from Hallam Hope after a great run and lay off from Josh Lundstram, but it was quickly cancelled out. Rochdale’s equaliser was credited to Sam Mather, but it looked a lot like an own goal by Gardner.

It was a poor corner, and even poorer defending. A draw doesn’t do much for either team’s faint play off hopes, and it looks like we’ll be renewing hostilities in the National League again next season. But, after years of struggle and decline, the future is starting to look brighter for these dark satanic mill towns.

You can find Arlene on X: @arlenefinnigan

Ed is on X: @Ed_Stanley1

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