SELL UP NOW OR WE’LL DIE
OLDHAM Athletic will “disappear” unless hapless owner Abdallah Lemsagam cuts his losses and sells the club.
That is the view of Push the Boundary, an independent supporters’ group formed in protest against the Moroccan’s disastrous four-year tenure.
Oldham’s second relegation in four years was confirmed last weekend, meaning the Latics will spend next season outside the Football League for the first time in 115 years.
It comes amid accusations of long-term neglect and mismanagement, with Lemsagam and his brother Mo – the club’s director of football – widely blamed for overspending on substandard players, meddling in team selection and failing to communicate with supporters.
“With Abdallah in charge, we’ve got no future,” said Adam Keeley, co-founder of Push the Boundary.
“We’ve got a debt of £5.2m. A £900,000 HMRC bill looming. In the National League, those numbers are only going to rise because the money coming in will practically vanish.
“So many members of staff have gone that the ones who are left are doubling and tripling up on workload. That leads to a lack of professionalism because people can’t do their jobs properly.
Heartache
“If Abdallah is still here this time next year, I think we’ll be struggling at the wrong end of the National League. And after that, who knows? It’s very sad.
“So many clubs have gone through heartache recently and I’d hate to think Oldham could disappear. But if we continue like this, I can’t see any other outcome.”
Lemsagam has promised an unchanged budget in a bid to make an instant return to the EFL and has repeatedly insisted he is willing to sell up.
However, Keeley says the reported £6m asking price makes that an unlikely prospect.
“I’m not being funny but £6m? Come on,” he says. “All he owns is the club badge. He doesn’t own the stadium. He doesn’t own the training ground.
Recruitment
“He literally owns a squad of players that’s just been relegated from League Two. They’re not worth six quid, never mind six million.
“And as for his promises, what are they worth? He’s broken so many over the years.
“If you look at his statement around the time (manager) John Sheridan came back, he said he’d put all he could into bringing in the quality to keep us in the League. We ended up bringing two players in – one who hadn’t played for two years and a striker who’d scored five goals in about three seasons. He didn’t even do the basics.”
And those recruitment failures are, says Keeley, the root cause of Oldham’s relegation from the EFL.
“It has been coming,” he says. “That first year, he brought in a player on loan called Quincy Menig, who is now playing regularly in the Dutch top flight. We were paying him £12,000 a week.
“There’s talk that Mohamed Maouche and another player were on £5,000 a week.
“Then he started bringing players from the fourth and fifth division of France into the EFL and expected them to get results.
“When he realised that wasn’t the way to go, he signed players from Non-League. That’s fine in moderation. But players from Grantham Town and the like aren’t going to keep you in the League.
“Throw in his brother, who doesn’t understand English football, and two relegations in four years is where we find ourselves.”