Oldham Athletic will put the hard work of pre-season to the test for the first time this weekend.

Micky Mellon's men play the first of seven friendlies on Saturday, hosting League Two champions Stockport County at Boundary Park (kick-off 3pm).

Latics will have been back in training for almost a fortnight come kick-off, building up to the first friendly with a five-day training camp at St Andrew's, The Scottish university was specifically chosen by manager Mellon, who has used the facilities before.

And while he is keen to work on his players' fitness and footballing formulas for success, team bonding - and bedding in the five new signings made so far - has been one of the focal points, with Mellon believing togetherness combined with a change of scenery can enhance the spirit within the camp.

"The big (opportunity) is a change of environment because they're working hard every day and that can get a bit monotonous. Although we have a fabulous environment here it's nice to be able to change that," said the Latics boss.

"Then there's a bit of team bonding. It will just be us getting to know each other a bit better because we've got a number of new players and a lot of new staff members.

"And then get some good quality work in and controlling a lot of stuff that we wouldn't normally be able to do - when we eat, when we rest, when we work, and getting the extra training sessions in.

"I've been up to St Andrew's many times and the facilities are world class, so we're appreciative of the club for giving us the opportunity to go to such a world class environment to get some really good work done to keep moving us forward."

Speaking to the club website, Mellon added: "This is kind of a blueprint of a pre-season that I've done before, with measures and markers of teams gone by so that I can compare this team too. It's pretty similar to what we've done before and we're ready to adapt and adjust it if needs be.

"You communicate with the fitness people when the injuries start to appear. We have meetings every morning to see where we're up to. Can we push or do we have to pull back? At the minute it's pretty much push."