Selim Benachour willing to stand aside at Oldham for John Sheridan to return

Posted Sunday, January 23, 2022 by PA

Oldham interim boss Selim Benachour said he is willing to step aside if the troubled club’s owners want John Sheridan to return as manager.

Jack Muldoon’s hat-trick saw Benachour’s bottom-of-the-table Latics lose 3-0 at Harrogate, meaning the former Paris St Germain midfielder and Tunisia international is still without a league win since his promotion from an academy coaching role following Keith Curle’s departure in November.

Sheridan has already managed Oldham five times, including two caretaker stints, and has previously masterminded successful battles against relegation.

The former Premier League outfit currently lie seven points adrift from safety and, on the possibility of Sheridan relieving him of his temporary duties, Benachour said: “I have read that he wants to come back and help and I would welcome that, no problem.

“I will sit down with the owners and see what’s happening. I will never hide but I can go back to the youth team, no problem.”

On his side’s latest defeat, Benachour added: “I thought we controlled the game in the first half and had three or four chances which we did not score from. We also played good football and tried to build things and run in behind.

“We have worked on our finishing a lot in the last 10 days, but we still need to work harder on it. Then, in the second half, our standards dropped and the weaknesses resurfaced.

“We didn’t get forward as much and we also tried to chase the game a bit at the end and left ourselves exposed, which is why we conceded the third goal.”

Harrogate assistant-manager Paul Thirlwell, deputising for boss Simon Weaver after his positive Covid test, praised the variety of Muldoon’s treble strikes.

“They were three different and fantastic goals from Mully,” he said. “His first was a poacher’s finish, the second was composed and then he got a worldie for the third.”

Thirlwell was also pleased with how the team adapted to switching to a three-man defence following a run of four straight league defeats, culminating in last weekend’s 4-0 thumping at Newport.

“When you lose a game in the manner we did, you speak about what we should do moving forward and we (Thirlwell and Weaver) both thought the change in system could work for this game,” he said.

“We worked all week on it and we have good options within our squad that allow us to be adaptable.

“You can get stuck in a mindset of playing the same way all the time, but the players made the new formation work.

“It was a really pleasing performance coming off the back of a spell of difficult league results, although those games have been against difficult opposition. Last week was a really poor performance, though, so we wanted to bounce back and I thought the players were magnificent.”