Fondop's wall-mounted motivation to take Oldham up

Oldham Athletic's 116-year stay in the English Football League ended in ignominy in 2022.

The Latics picked up the unenviable record of becoming the first former Premier League club to drop out of the top four tiers of English football.

Three years on from that chastening relegation, one man who has seen the club at its lowest ebb has set about leading the charge back to league football.

BBC Radio Manchester spoke to striker Mike Fondop about how he has motivated himself to lead Oldham to glory in Sunday's National League promotion final against Southend United at Wembley.

The 31-year-old arrived at the club during Oldham's ill-fated 2022 season but injuries restricted him to just two appearances.

Despite the club losing its EFL status, Fondop stuck with the club and has scored 37 goals in 113 National League appearances since.

But what encouraged him to stay at Boundary Park?

"The manager at the time, John Sheridan, called me after the end of the season and said 'I need you to come back. You owe me because I signed you and you only played two games. I want you to get this club back where it belongs'," Fondop said.

"So that has always been an objective because I came and I didn't have a chance to help them stay in League Two.

"The club doesn't belong in League Two, they belong higher than that but it is a step by step process."

Between their relegation from League Two and the start of the following 2022-23 National League season, a takeover of the Latics by local businessman Frank Rothwell was completed.

That ended Abdallah Lemsagam's tenure in control of the club and Fondop said that the difference between then and now is stark.

"The club is absolutely different now. The ownership now is more family orientated. The owners are approachable and want everyone to feel part of a family," he added.

"In the past it felt toxic. As a player I was focused on what I was signed to do but the environment at the time felt toxic. Now it is so different.

"If a club doesn't treat its players well you might think in the long run you can get away with it, you might for a period of time, but eventually it is going to affect results. Now the treatment is completely different."

Oldham are not a club which have had much to celebrate in recent decades, having floated around the lower leagues of English football both before and after the turn of the millennium - having spent 21 years in the third tier prior to relegation to League Two in 2018.

Their most recent promotion came in 1991 when they won the then Division Two second-tier championship.

Their recent record makes for grim reading. Their first season in the National League saw them finish 12th and was the first time they had finished in the top half of a division since 2009.

Fondop said a team talk from boss Micky Mellon about how long it had been since the club had won promotion helped motivate him ahead of the trip to the capital.

"It has been 34 years since we experienced promotion. I'm 31 so last time they won promotion I wasn't even born," Fondop added.

"After the gaffer said that I went home and wrote down 34 years in bold on a piece of paper with my goals for the season and I put it on my kitchen wall. It's always in my mind.

"It's in my head every day because I want to be part of history and I want the fans to get back into the feeling of what Oldham deserves. It means more than people might think. It's in my kitchen until today and I'm not going to remove it until it is done."

As for how he plans to ease his nerves ahead of running out at Wembley, Fondop has an eclectic and varied music taste.

"On gamedays I listen to gospel and that is what calms me," he said.

"I love Andrea Bocelli, Time to Say Goodbye is one of my favourites.

"I love jazz music as well, I don't have one specific type of song, I love a bit of everything. Usually in my downtime I can listen to opera and jazz. I don't like listening to things that give me headaches."