"WHEN you go on that hashtag OAFC you’re hooked," says David Wheater. "There’s something every day from that club."

He should know. As for the last 12 months or so, he has been part of the Boundary Park saga.

A 70 per cent pay cut; consigned to training with the youth team and playing in a too-small kit; injured lifting his dog out of his car... they are events that might have been dreamt up by script writers of the old football drama Dream Team. But for Wheater they were real life and, he says, led to him being prescribed medication from his GP to enable him to cope.

He has kept his counsel about it all, until now. Although he parted company with the club in March by mutual agreement, it was not until his original two-year deal expired that he opened up to the media.

In a candid interview, former Bolton Wanderers defender Wheater gave his side of his Latics story, explaining how he only left Bolton because of the level of uncertainty over the future at the club, but found himself with even greater, personal instability.

Speaking to BBC Radio Manchester, he said: “I was at the hotel at Bolton ready to re-sign but I was told that it won’t matter until the club gets bought and there was no guarantee that was going to happen so I could have been out of a job. So I decided to go to Oldham because they wanted me.

“I didn’t hear good things. I got warned not to go.

“In my head I was a Premier League player, Championship player all my life so I thought ‘it won’t happen to me’, what I heard. It did in the end.

“But I got there and everything seemed all right. Me and my agent told them to their face that we’d heard bad stuff about the club and they said ‘oh no, that’s ex employees’ and we said about late pay and they said ‘no, everyone will get paid on time while they’re here’.

“The day before the first payday I’d asked a few lads if they’d been getting paid on time and they said different things, different times, so I said ‘oh right, I’ll go and ask because it’s payday tomorrow’.

“Me and Woodsy (Gary Woods) went up and they were like ‘maybe tomorrow, maybe Monday’.

“I said ‘no, it’ll be tomorrow’. I said ‘I’ve come from Bolton, we weren’t getting paid, I got promised that everything would be on time’.

“So they said ‘okay we’ll sort you out first’.

“We didn’t get paid on the Friday, the game was on the Saturday and it still wasn’t there in the morning so I was texting the guy and I said ‘look, I’m thinking about quitting already if this is going to go on’

“It finally went in just as I set off for the game."

But that was just the start of Wheater's Latics nightmare.

“The first (year) was all right because I was playing. I didn’t mind being paid late if I was getting it. A few of the other players might have been different but I was getting it in the end, and I was playing so I was happy," he explained.

“The second year was a bit different."

Covid was the catalyst, with players and staff furloughed. Wheater took the biggest hit of them all to his wages, losing around 70 per cent, with no top-up from the club.

He disputed it, then-manager Dino Maamria told the experienced former Bolton and Middlesbrough man that he was under orders not to play him again. Maamria was then replaced by Harry Kewell, who had the same remit.

Wheater continued to train but caught Covid in September. When he returned after his period of quarantine he was told to train with the youth team.

“Harry Kewell said they’d just decided I was with the youth team now," said the 34-year-old, who suffered concussion in his first game with the youths.

“I didn’t even start the game. ‘Weather’ is on the board, not even Wheater. They’d spelt my name wrong," he continued.

“I had a tiny kit, I had to swap kits with the lad that came off at half-time. It was just a bit embarrassing for me personally.

“Woodsy came out to catch the ball and the striker’s pushed me into him so I was concussed."

Wheater suffered a further setback when he sustained a back problem lifting his dog out of the car. He was sidelined for two months with a disc problem and sciatica.

“I wasn’t doing daft things, I just pulled it out of the car boot and I hurt my back," he said. "I’ve had back problems before."

The club also expressed concerns about the former England Under 21 international relocating to his native north east, and in a statement said: "David recently moved to a new house, this was firstly a concern to the club due to Whereabouts and Anti-Doping regulations and equally importantly involves a potential round trip of over 200 miles which is not considered suitable by the club for a full-time professional in training especially one who is currently having medical treatment, certainly if his intention is to reside permanently at this property."

Wheater said: “The Friday before that statement came out about the dog I met Karl for the first time and he was saying about me taking a pay-off and stuff and I said ‘I want to play’.

"He said Abdallah wants it amicable in case I come back as manager. I won’t be coming back as manager!

“So he wants it amicable and then three days later he puts that statement out and says where I’m living, in the north east. What club has ever said anything about where a player lives.

"There was no problem with the drug stuff. I told them on the day where I live. The drug people could go to the house and I’d be there, no problem with that.

“It’s an hour and a half. If I was playing and we were winning there’s not going to be any problem.

“The sub keeper was coming every day from Walsall, there and back, which is longer than what I was doing and it was fine for him."

Wheater says the situation was not just a cause for concern for himself but also his wife, mother and father, adding that it culminated in him seeing his doctor.

Asked if it had affected him mentally, he said: “I had to get tablets off the doctor because I as the sleeping. I couldn’t sleep, I was just thinking about stuff, what to say and when to say stuff. When the club were putting out statements I kept quiet because I’d signed a confidentiality thing. But I wouldn’t sign it when I left.

“I was getting tablets off my doctor to help me sleep and chill out a bit.

“They told me to move back over here and gave me three days’ notice. They wanted me back in a house by 4 o’clock on Monday, which was a weekend in a pandemic.

“I was lucky I had a mate over here with a house spare."

But now his Oldham Athletic nightmare is over, Redcar-born Wheater is looking for something closer to home.

"I want to continue playing. I don’t think I’ll ever say that I’ve retired in case someone pops up," he said.

“I’d like to play local around Middlesbrough. I don’t think I’m going to be signing for Middlesbrough at this age but around the north east hopefully I can find a club."