Micky Mellon praised his side's battling qualities in earning a goalless draw at fellow promotion chasers Barnet.

Latics became the first club to take a point from the Bees at the Hive this season, ending their 100 per cent home record with the stalemate.

But while pleased in particular with the defensive elements of their performance, Mellon said they should not take any extra kudos from that statistic.

"We're Oldham, we don't come and take that as a prize, we come here to try to beat them. We came here to try to win," said the manager.

"We picked a team to try and win the game, the very least that you want to do is come away with something; get a clean sheet and come away with something. We'll take the positives out of that.

"We're Oldham and we'll go everywhere and try to beat you, but we'll take what we get, respect the point as we always say; a hard-earned point. The boys deserved that from us, they fought their hearts out and a good battling point.

"We had to get an awful lot of stuff right to get that clean sheet. We fought really hard to try to get that.

"As always we want to try to improve and get better and we could have been maybe at times a bit better with the ball and took a bit more risk at times. But at the end of the day to come and be battling against a team that's at the top end of the division certainly we will be happy with a point, and remember they've still got to come to Oldham."

And Mellon said the result and performance were a measure of how far Latics have come in the last 12 months.

"Last season we might not be able to sustain that type of work-rate but this season you've seen how fit they are and buoyed on by a magnificent (away) crowd again," the Scot continued.

"We have to thank them again, they were brilliant for the whole of the game and played a massive part in getting that little bit more out of us.

"I'm just sorry that we couldn't show a wee bit of quality or get a bit of fortune, or maybe we could have got some of the 50-50 refereeing decisions go our way when we got none, in order to try to get us up the pitch. But all in all a pat on the back for the boys and a good battling point."