Mellon reflects on 12 months in charge of Oldham Athletic

"It feels about 10 years!" he said when the anniversary was mentioned.

Although a leap year made it longer than usual, such an admission is a reminder amid a decent start to this season that his first 12 months at Boundary Park have not been without their challenges.

One year. A milestone that 18 managers before him have failed to reach, which is as good an indication as any of the turbulent times the club has endured.

Not since Lee Johnson, who was manager for almost two years from March 2013, has anyone gone this distance.

And had it not been for a wealth of experience behind him, Mellon suggests he might not have made it this far either.

He admitted towards the end of last season - around about the time that Latics delivered what he described as a "toothless" performance in a goalless draw at already-relegated Oxford City - that it was his toughest undertaking in management.

The outlook is brighter a few months on, but the graft is ongoing.

"It's been a lot of hard work and a lot of moments where I was glad I was as experienced as I am," the former Fleetwood, Shrewsbury Town and Tranmere Rovers boss admitted.

"It's the hardest job but only because it's probably the biggest distance between where I picked the club up and where it should be. The gap between that is a lot of wins needed to get us there. But we are definitely moving forward. We're winning games.

"And the people around me and the people above me, Darren (Royle) and the (Rothwell) family, have been nothing short of fantastic in understanding what we have to do here to try to move this football club towards winning loads of games of football, which it should do, and keep moving up the leagues.

Micky Mellon on his first day at Boundary Park (Image: The Oldham Times)

"We have a really good situation here. Loads of work to do but definitely building."

Although last season ended in disappointment, with the top seven still in touching distance for a long time but constantly slipping through their fingers on an 11-game winless run that began in early March, the foundations to help move the club forward were being put into place.

"I want to be respectful to all the players because it's difficult. The players that aren't here now were all good lads, they were fine, but I never came here because we were top of the league; I never came here because we were blowing everybody away. I came here because unfortunately players weren't able to get the results for the first two months of the season to keep the manager in the job and he paid the price for that.

"So when you come into a job and it's a team that's not winning then you have to find a way of trying to get results and stopping the slide, and also push it forward, but understand that the players that were here still had 20 months left of contracts, and obviously weren't getting the results that were necessary or performances that were good enough to win games of football at this level," said Mellon, explaining the balancing act.

"So change had to happen and you have to be patient with a lot of things, and we got a lot of flack along the way because people maybe thought we should have been doing better than we're doing, which is fair, that goes with the territory. But we understood that given time we would be able to bring players in here who would excite the supporters and keep moving it forward.

"But we've still got a lot of work to do and still got a lot of recruitment to do because I've done this before and I understand it. It will be about making the players better that I've got or finding better players from outside in order to keep moving us forward. But at the minute we're very short of numbers as well.

"Everybody who was fit was involved on Saturday so I wouldn't say we're down to the bare bones but there's definitely room to try to work a few more players into the group to help us to keep things moving along. But I have the ability to be able to probably do that now because we've moved Alex Reid on because he needs to go and get first team football, but it frees me up a bit of budget to maybe do a few bits."

Mellon would rather look forward than back, but his mission remains the same as it was on his first day in OL1.

Speaking to The Oldham Times, he said: "I want to be able to get this fantastic football club smiling again.

"That's what we wanted to do when we first came in, we wanted to put a big smile on its face again because it's had some really tough times.

"It's a wonderful, wonderful football club with so much history, brilliant owners, terrific supporters, and hopefully we can keep moving it forward and put a big smile on everyone's face."