Ahead of tonight’s clash against Halifax Town, Micky Mellon wants his side to concentrate on themselves and the task at hand.
Latics have just two games remaining of the campaign, finishing off the season with a home game against Wealdstone on Saturday.
Tonight's fixture takes place at Chesterfield after the postponement of the fixture twice at the Shay and Mellon wants his side to end the campaign as strongly as possible.
“I’m always one to say that we’ll just concentrate on us, that’s what we can control and what is in our hands," he said.
“We have influence over our performances and results, whatever happens with other teams in their games will take care of itself.
“It’s the penultimate game of the season and it's important that we look to do as well as possible.
"We always want to do better, and we know that we need to do much better than in our recent games."
With a quick turnaround between tonight’s game and Saturday, the manager has had to carefully manage his training arrangements this week.
Whilst understanding that it’s not ideal for his side to have to play two games in three days through no fault of their own, he doesn’t want it to be a distraction or an excuse for the lads.
“We have to manage the travelling and training times in between games, understanding how we prepare the players for matches," he added.
“We don’t want to take anything out of their legs that they’ll need for games, we’re experienced enough to know that.
“At the end of the day, it’s the last two games of the season, and we just have to go out there and try and win for Oldham, it’s as simple as that.
“It’s not ideal that we’re having to play when and where we are, but it’s happened now, so we just have to get on with it.
“We have to accept it and move on, even though we don’t agree with it.
“There’s no point feeling a bit sorry for ourselves about it, we just have to try and win the game.”
Mellon is the first to admit that recent results haven’t been up to what he expects or what Latics have needed at this stage of the season.
Reflecting on recent fixtures, he knows that there have been too many draws, but is determined to learn from this period and carry the positives forward.
“I look at the evidence of the last ten games or so, and see we’ve played a lot of top teams in the league.
“It’s a positive that we’ve not lost to many of them, but the issue is we’ve drawn too many games.
“I look at how we’ve played at times against some of the better teams in the league, including the champions, and want to take the positives from that.
“If we take the positives from that, and learn from those experiences, we will make the progress we need to, and move in the right direction.
“I want us to win more games, but I have to look at it as a manager and understand where we are at the moment.
“I see we’re in a position where we can easily compete with the top sides, I look at the Altrincham game and think that there were moments where we could have won that game.
“It’s not a case that we were outplayed for most of the game and didn’t produce anything ourselves.
“If we learn how to come out on the right side in those close games, then we’ll make the progress we need to.”
