New Oldham boss Mellon knows what it takes to win promotion
Basking in the autumn sunshine at Boundary Park, and fresh from his first training session with the players, the Scot spoke of his hunger for success.
Mellon has a catalogue of promotions as both a player and, in particular, as a manager, and he said: “I want many, many more. I’m hungry for more.
“The opportunity to come to a club like Oldham, in the situation that Oldham’s in at the minute, I think is great.
“I’m really pleased to be here and really impressed with everything about it and I’m looking forward to getting going.
“I think we’ve met at the right time.
“I wasn’t desperate to come back into work. I was very fortunate that I was able to wait of the right opportunity to come along, and Oldham was looking for the right type of manager to take them forward.
“We connected really well and I’m really excited about it, and I look forward to getting on with managing the team now and winning games of football.
“The ultimate vision is (promotion back to the Football League), but the important things is – and I’m not trying to buy time here but we need to take stock of where we are at the minute.
“We know where we want to get to, we know what we want to get and we know what that looks like but we’re not there, so we’ve got to take time and be patient today, and gradually build it back, win enough games to gradually get back to where we want to be.
“There will be many ups and downs in the journey to get there. As long as everybody is fair and understands at the minute this is the league we’re competing in, it’s a very difficult league but we want to keep improving and we want to give ourselves a good chance of winning games, which we’ll try to do every weekend, and every midweek.
“And then we’ll get to a stage where we’re winning more and more and more and hopefully that’s enough then to take us to the next stage of our journey.”
Mellon, who sparked Fleetwood’s rise to the Football League and won back-to-back promotions with Tranmere Rovers from the National League and League Two in 2018 and 2019, added: “I’ve done this before. That’s why I’m saying what I’m saying now because I’ve done those journeys before and it’s important that the supporters understand it’s going to take time. There’s not a magic wand that can get you there as quick as what we’d all like. Enjoy the journey, enjoy doing what we’re doing and we’ll try to build forward every weekend and get to where we all want to get to as quickly as we can.”
