Ex-Oldham striker lifts lid on Abdallah Lemsagam, relegation and David Wheater

The striker’s second spell at Boundary Park coincided with the former agent’s takeover at Boundary Park which was formally confirmed in January 2018.

It was then that things start to go wrong, says Davies, with Latics ultimately relegated to League Two under Richie Wellens the following May.

A good friend of David Wheater’s having been a team-mate of the defender's at both Wolves and Bolton, the 35-year-old now looks on with a great deal of sadness at the club’s plight.

Wheater’s dispute with the club, brought about by proposed pay cuts last summer, saw him not play for the first team this season with his departure formally confirmed on Friday.

Speaking to the Boundary Park Alert System podcast, Davies believes it is the latest in a long line of self-inflicted wounds since Lemsagam took over.

“I’ve known Dave for 15 years and Dave is harmless,” the frontman, without a club since leaving Mansfield, said.

“He’s a good guy, but I guarantee what he’s being put through now is nothing to do with him, it’s the owner wanting him out.

“I’ve not seen David play in years and he’s not going to be the same defender that first went to Bolton and he’s not going to be the same defender that was at Middlesbrough, but his experience and his impact around the place is massive and I don’t think people realise how much impact that players like that can have.

“He (Lemsagam) did it with Anthony Gerrard and he’ll do whatever he can to get someone out.

“I don’t know why he took over Oldham. I don’t understand why he did it. He’s ruined the club.”

Davies returned for the 2017-18 campaign having previously been at Boundary Park between 2007-2009.

The contrast between those two periods in the club’s recent history is stark, according to the striker.

“From the two times I was at that club it was night and day,” he said.

“Even the year I was there the second time, July to December and January to May were night and day as well.

“That dressing room from July to December was unreal, the spirit in there was unreal. January to May, I can honestly say the players weren’t enjoying coming into work.

Craig Davies scores against Bristol Rovers back in December 2017

“Any player that comes to me and asks me about stuff I’ve turned around and said ‘I’m not going to lie, I wouldn’t be going there if I was you’.

“That’s nothing to do with the club, it’s to do with him (Lemsagam).”

Such are his concerns over the current ownership, Davies thought things could have got even worse with Latics flirting with non-league football.

“Just because you’ve watched football for however many years doesn’t mean you know football,” he said of the owner.

“He’s taken over a football club and instead of getting the right people in place to do certain things he’s trying to do it in his style, his way and it’s obviously not working.

“I’m surprised that what's happened at Chesterfield and Stockport hasn’t happened at Oldham.”

In a wide-ranging podcast, Davies pointed to almost immediate alarm bells when Lemsagam took over.

Appearances in the dressing room from the owner, issues with wages, the influx of unknown signings and more mean that the man who scored 14 goals that season believes one man is to blame for the relegation to the fourth tier.

“The car crash of an owner, that’s what happened,” Davies said when reflecting on the campaign.

“He ruined it. He ruined the dressing room, he just ruined everything. He disrespected the players, he disrespected the staff, he disrespected the office staff, these are people there who matter.

“After a while that just becomes a poisonous environment.”

The way the new owner went about his recruitment is a well-documented issue and continues to this day.

“He was bringing players in on four or five grand a week but then you’ve got players that are playing every week and playing better than him that are on half of that,” Davies added.

“It’s going to upset the dressing room. For me, as one of the older players at the time, I tried to keep it together in there, so did Anthony Gerrard, but after a while it just becomes the wild west.

“It’s not a secret. He’s bringing in players that Richie’s never heard of. I’m not trying to say they were bad people or bad eggs in the dressing room at all but Richie would probably have gone for players that he knows.

“He’d only finished playing two or three years before that, he knows the game, he knows the players so he would have gone and got people he felt could benefit the team.

“Abdallah wasn’t doing that, he wasn’t letting him do that. He got rid of some good people out of that dressing room.

“There was a divide in the dressing room. You literally had the boys that Abdallah brought in on one side and the boys that were already there on the other side.

“I got on with both parties because I’ve played abroad at 19 years old in Italy in Serie B. I know it’s hard going to a different country so therefore I made an effort.

“But there was just stuff every day and it wasn’t on the field, it was off the field. Regardless of how professional you are, that is going to have an affect on the team and it did.”

Latics declined to comment on Davies’ comments when approached by The Oldham Times.