‘We’ve given ourselves a fighting chance’ – Tranmere boss Micky Mellon

Posted Sunday, May 01, 2022 by PA

Micky Mellon praised his Tranmere players after they took the play-off race to the final day by beating Oldham 2-0.

Rovers saw off the already-relegated Latics with goals from Josh Hawkes and Kane Hemmings and will go into League Two’s last round of games needing to win at Leyton Orient and hope for favours elsewhere to snatch a top-seven finish.

And Mellon admitted that was all they could have hoped for going into the game.

“We just needed to have something to go for,” he said. “They had to know the situation so we spoke at half-time about the results elsewhere and what was going our way.

“I wanted them to be excited about fighting for the challenge and I wanted them to keep the tempo up and go and get some more goals to seal the deal, and they went out and got another one.

“We’re probably a bit disappointed we haven’t scored more but it’s a clean sheet and a victory, that’s all we could do.

“It was just important we got a result that means we take it into the last day and give ourselves a fighting chance.

“We know that if we could have done a bit better on the road we would have been in the play-offs and cemented in there, that’s the frustrating and disappointing thing.

“But I said to them before the game that all we could do was take care of our own business and keep trying to win games, that’s what we did today.”

Oldham boss John Sheridan reserved his praise for the travelling fans, who turned out in their numbers despite the anger and disappointment of last week’s relegation still being visibly raw.

And he insisted he will stop at nothing to get the club back into the EFL as quickly as possible.

“It’s one of the worst feelings I’ve ever had,” he said.

“I’ve been in the game probably 40 years. Even before the game I felt sick because we’re coming here for nothing and I knew we were going to have the support we got.

“I got quite emotional towards the end with the supporters. How can you have that support when we’ve just been relegated, with them trying to get behind the team? I just find it hard to talk about.

“If I look at the goals, I don’t want to be harsh on the players, but I said to them last week you’ve got to take a long, hard look at yourselves. I’ve come in and I was hoping we’d do better than we have done.

“I was dying for us to stay up, but it hasn’t happened. I’m here next year and I’m going to try my socks off, just for them (the supporters), to try to get us back up as quickly as I can.

“It’s not even worth me really going on about the game. I’m 150 per cent going to try my hardest to get a team together that’s going to try to get us straight back up.”