Oldham Athletic round off pre-season with Shrewsbury win

Mike Fondop's first half finish was enough to separate them and Shrewsbury Town to maintain an unbeaten run in their three home fixtures, all against League One opposition.

In addition, Latics have not conceded at home this summer - with a 1-0 win over newly promoted Stockport County and goalless draw with Lincoln at Boundary Park.

"It just finishes off pre-season for us. We've had a really good pre-season and we've got a lot of people through fit now, and that's the important part," said Mellon.

"It's always about fitness. Of course you'd like players to find some kind of form and maybe look like what we'll be doing a little bit. I think we've seen signs of that today.

"Going into next week, we look ready.

"We want to pass the ball and we encourage them to pass the ball. That's one thing we've tried to do and the boys take a lot of credit for that, we've used pre-season to try to integrate a new way of playing and a set of principles that I feel will help us as the season goes on. We want to play and we want to make good decisions about when we can play and when it's better to go a bit more direct and things like that. But for that the boys need a manager that says 'keep playing, I'll take responsibility, keep passing the ball and just keep trying to find the good decisions that will be necessary in order to make us a good team at this level'."

Mike Fondop struck in the 23rd minute (Image: Thomas Lee Stacey)

Mellon added: "I think it was more about us trying to integrate a style of play, we used (the friendlies) for that. We made some mistakes along the way but we knew that was going to happen and we are going to go away and try to rectify that and build on that and try to put some principles into how we want to do things, and it's got better every week and it looks more and more solid all the time.

"We took chances, but I want us to be a team that takes chances for the right reasons to try to be positive, and we've got the players to play this type of football, but I would just like to back it up a few more.

"I know we've got a couple of injuries and that's kind of hampered us, with two really good strikers - probably the better strikers in the division by a mile, but the boys have come in and done well. But we don't have much behind that.

"The next weeks will be spent trying to find ways of trying to back up what we've already got."