JOHN Sheridan says he will fight to the very end for Oldham Athletic, and is unwavering in his belief they can survive.

Latics have yet to take a point from any of their four consecutive home games, hosting Leyton Orient in the final one of that quartet tonight (7.45pm).

An eight-game winless run, including defeats in the last six, has not been as detrimental as it might have been, however, with Stevenage winless in 10 and Barrow, who are six points and two places in front, winning just one in 10.

Those runs have led to managerial changes at both clubs, with Steven Evans replacing Paul Tisdale at Stevenage in mid-March and more recently Phil Brown succeeding Mark Cooper at Barrow.

Neither team has yet to experience the so-called ‘new manager bounce’.

Latics’ bounce of a seven-game unbeaten run when Sheridan returned is now a distant memory.

And where Latics had the buffer of games in hand on them both until last week, come tonight they will have played a game more and Sheridan knows they must make it count.

“The belief’s there because there’s still a massive chance for us to stay up,” he said.

“I’ve got belief in what I’m doing and the first-half performance shows me that.

“The players are there to do it.

“But we can’t keep doing these silly things and making silly judgements and allowing things to go on.

“While there’s hope, I’ve said to them the only consolation you’ve got is there are one or two teams who aren’t winning around us who are giving us a little bit of a chance and hope that we can get out of it.

“But games are running out.

“We’ve lost games that have been a hard way to take for everyone involved.

“But you’ve got to be strong and pick yourself up as much as you can and move on.”

Asked if it was unthinkable not to capitalise on any of the four straight home games, Sheridan added: “When you’re down and fighting relegation and you’re in the bottom two and you haven’t been winning throughout the season it’s always difficult, and it’s even more difficult in the way we’ve ended up losing games.

“We’ve just got to be strong and be prepared and fight and if it has to go to the final game so be it, but we’ve got to try to win games.

“We’ve got to try to get in and around Stevenage and try to catch them.

“We’ve got a big game against Orient. That’s a big, big game now because then we go into the Stevenage game.”