Micky Mellon has revealed he tried to tempt Matt Smith to Boundary Park.

But while the 35-year-old has yet to officially announce his retirement from football, it is the business interests he is pursuing outside of the game that have prevented him from returning to Oldham Athletic.

Smith, who ended the season - and his contract - with Salford City as the club's leading goalscorer in, is involved with a venture capitalist company that works with athletes.

After leaving Salford, he ended a message to supporters on social media by saying: "I'm going to take some time now to consider my next step, which includes opportunities away from playing."

And Mellon says Smith's decision not to come back to a club he served for two years from 2011 to 2013, and where he was considered a fans' favourite, was a business one.

When asked about the likelihood of adding to his squad before the start of the new season next Saturday (August 10), the Latics boss said: "I don't know. We've got loads of irons in the fire and spoken to loads of players, disappointed sometimes to lose one or two.

"I thought we'd Matt Smith at one stage but he's decided he doesn't want to come back into football.

"It's a blow because I think he would have been brilliant for us and he knew he would be as well. He was torn, but he's got a really good arrangement outside of football that he must now go and take and I understood that.

"I had a really good chat with him, but it just wasn't to be."Mellon added: "He loves the club and he kept saying that, and he loved what we were doing.

"He's a romantic like me about football and he'd seen what might happen if he was here and how that might go. But it's not happened so we just have to move on now."

Former Blackpool, Tranmere and Burnley midfielder Mellon, whose professional career ended in his early to mid-thirties, said he empathised with Smith.

"You want your mind made up for you and I think his business made his mind up, what he's doing outside of football made it very easy to make his mind up. He can't leave that and I understood why," said the Scot.

"We'll keep looking and see if we can add to things.

"We want to build that squad, you're not going to get through just with 11 players, you need a squad that can handle every week performing the way we want to perform, whether that be coming on at a certain stage and getting us over the line or attack a team that we need to try and get a result from.

"We'll try to do that."