A FOOTBALL finance expert says a lack of transparency with Oldham Athletic's latest accounts is misleading to supporters, and any potential buyers.

Latics last month submitted unaudited abbreviated accounts for the year 2019/20, indicating a modest loss of £75,000 despite showing no profit or loss account.

Kieran Maguire, podcast presenter and author of The Price of Football, said the figures released were not thorough enough to give an accurate indication of the state of Latics' finances.

And he warned the lack of detail would only add to the strength of feeling among disenchanted fans, who have already called for a Boundary Park boycott this season, while it could be off-putting for any potential investors.

After the figures were published, Maguire tweeted: "Oldham submit unaudited abbreviated accounts with no profit or loss account. They show a modest loss of £75,000.

"The losses may be higher in reality though as the creditors note shows that director loans have fallen by £650,000. Could be that the club has repaid the loan OR the directors have written off against profits."

Speaking to The Oldham Times he added: "I think the problem is they put out so little information, and I'm not exactly convinced that it's reliable information, because last year they went and changed all the numbers.

"It's difficult to have a lot of confidence.

"They're unaudited figures, there's very little information there.

"They don't have to be legally audited because they're below a certain size and there are many clubs in both League One and League Two which are unaudited.

"The trouble is every £1,000 you spend paying an auditor is £1,000 less for the club but it's not necessarily going to make you better off. And legally, they could be audited but you still wouldn't have to show any more information than the club presently discloses.

"I think the club could put a lot of minds at rest by just being more transparent, but they don't seem to welcome any scrutiny."

And Maguire said the matter was further complicated by Abdallah Lemsagam only owning part of the club, with the ground rented from landlords Brass Bank.

"The club has been losing money for a long period of time, but that in itself is not unusual. I think some of the unique issues in relation to Oldham are connected to who owns what. There are bits and pieces owned by different groups, that increases uncertainty," he said.

"If you are looking to sell the club it makes it very difficult to sell.

"It's the same as if you're trying to sell a house and one of the neighbours is claiming part of your back lawn and things like that.

"It's a challenging club and it doesn't seem to have a transparent ethos in terms of keeping the fans engaged.

"What we've seen over the course of the last 12 to 15 months is that the happier the fans, the more likely they are to put extra money into the club, so it's come back to bite them on the bum."

Maguire added: "I wish I could say something more positive.

"I've analysed what they've put out and put out some tweets to that effect, but beyond that there's just not enough meat on the bones to draw any meaningful conclusions."