IN the last of our five-part feature with former Latics head coach Keith Curle, he tells SUZANNE GELDARD about his relationship with the Lemsagams and the regrets he does - and doesn’t - have.

IT pains Keith Curle to see what happened to Oldham Athletic after he left.

In many ways he feels relegation was avoidable, even with those strict squad restrictions.

“I still say now, the players that we signed, the first group of players were going in the right direction to keep the club up,” said Curle.

“With the second transfer window that I’d said we needed we would have had enough then to keep the club up, and that’s what it was all about really - keeping the club up - and that then would have given you a platform.

“We weren’t far away.”

But Curle was denied that opportunity when his eight-month spell in charge ended by mutual consent in November, with Latics third from bottom.

For reasons probably known only to the Lemsagam brothers there was a two-month period without a recognised manager/ head coach.

By the time John Sheridan came back to his beloved club in January, Latics had drifted too far off course, having been winless in seven league games under Selim Benachour and rock bottom of League Two.

“It didn’t surprise me when he got given the job. They were desperate to give him the job,” said Curle of the decision to ask Benachour to step up from the Academy.

“If you’re a puppeteer you’ve got to have someone that you can operate. They probably had a period of time when they didn’t have that and they needed to put someone in place.

“He’s had his opportunity, it didn’t work and caused some damage in the meantime.”

Despite securing a dramatic, late win at home to Port Vale in what proved to be his penultimate game, Curle sensed what was coming felt when they failed to back the result up at Northampton - the club he had won promotion to League One with before joining Latics - the following Tuesday night, on November 23.

“I let everyone know what I thought after the Northampton game. I knew I’d set the wheels in motion because of the people I’d directed my frustrations to,” he said of his reaction to a 2-1 defeat at Sixfields.

“The day after, Mo rang me and said ‘My brother’s made a decision, can you speak to him’. And I said ‘He’s YOUR brother, why do you want ME to speak to him?’”

Communication between Curle and the owner had been limited. Indeed, they had met in person only once.

Covid restrictions had kept Abdallah Lemsagam away from the club until late last year. The sporting director was generally the point of contact, but did not always have the directive.

“If you haven’t got a relationship as a manager and an owner it’s very difficult to have success,” said Curle.

“There’s got to be that relationship, that line of communication whereby the manager can speak to the owner.

“If not, the manager has got to have somebody in place who you can speak to, who can make decisions, who the manager can go to and say ‘Can I do this? Is this the way that we go?’ and it’s got to be a ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Not ‘I’ll find out’. If that person has to find out, there’s no point him being there.

“That goes for sporting director or director of football. Is that role necessary in League Two? No.”

Curle met Abdallah for the first, and only, time just a few weeks before his departure.

“I had one or two conversations with him,” explained the 58-year-old.

“He says the right terminology, but I don’t see him as somebody that’s inspiring.

“He has no leadership material. It might be because of the difficult times he was having when he came over, but all he was doing was moaning; moaning about what the fans were saying, moaning about this, moaning about that.

“I’m thinking ‘I really need to hear a plan. What’s our plan going forward?’

“All he asked me was if I wanted to change the changing rooms because they were unlucky. That was the extent of it. I haven’t based my career on ‘luck’.

“He didn’t ask about my plans or my longer term vision. But he owns the football club, it’s not down to me to produce a plan for him, he should be selling his vision to me - ‘this is what I want from my head coach’. Then I could have told him how close I think I could have got.

“I told him what we had and it was going to be a long and difficult season, but I felt we would stay up.

“But all he did was moan about relationships with local media and things like that, and you’re thinking ‘I’ve bigger fish to fry’.

“I don’t think they had the stomach for the fight.”

He’s not convinced they care about the club either.

“They don’t like the fact they’re not being successful, but I don’t think they’ve got a genuine passion for the football club, or Oldham. I don’t even think they enjoy Oldham as a town,” said Curle.

“And I just don’t think they like the Oldham fans because of how they’ve been treated by the Oldham fans, but that’s because they’ve not taken responsibility or accountability. They haven’t engaged with them whatsoever.”

Although Curle does not condone throwing objects onto the pitch or invasions, he commiserates with their situation.

“I can sympathise massively with the fans. They see their club dropping like a stone and get no interaction from the owners," he said.

“I don’t think they should be involved in Oldham Athletic Football Club. That’s not based on results, that’s based on my relationship with them.

“If you’re a manager of a football club and you’re not given a plan or a structure to work from, how are you going to be successful?

“Every time you try to speak to someone at the football club, they’re going. Some good people, who potentially could have had a lot to offer the football club, but it’s just accepted that people go, and they are replaced with a cheaper option.

“I think very quickly professional people realise that environment is not conducive to success, so they move on.

“You have to encourage them to move on to better themselves.

“There’s no investment, no plan and nothing to buy into.”

Yet, despite it all, Curle does not regret taking the job on in the first instance, or prolonging his stay. Quite the opposite in fact.

“Even up until I left I enjoyed working there, I enjoyed the football club. Probably a lot of it was to do with what Oldham was like when I played against them. I always thought it was a difficult place to go to, there was a hunger about the place when you first walked in,” he explained.

“Being part of a team that reignites that, that was the exciting part.

“And then you have a look at what’s in the building, you know there’s a lot of work to do. Do I regret re-signing? I regret leaving more than anything, because I do believe I could have changed it.

“I knew I needed two transfer windows. That’s not two transfer windows to get the club into the top seven, it had to be a process and a slow process to stay up, mid-table, top of the bottom half of the table, and then by that time three or four years down the line previous regimes’ recruitment would have been long gone and we would have gone back to basics and gone back to the understanding of a League Two football club. Whereas trying to get back, it’s not easier, it’s harder because you haven’t got the attraction of League status. And some of the teams competing now in the National League are more suited to the National League than what Oldham are, and not just purely financially.

“But if they think they can go down a division and it will be less expensive... the biggest fear is they could be gone for a long time.”