“There’s not enough hours in the day on the training ground,” was how David Unsworth responded to the topic of Latics’ preparations for this weekend’s trip to Maidenhead.

The Oldham boss had been conscious of how hard his team had worked against Wrexham and the consequences of that in the Tuesday night fixture, at home to Scunthorpe. But with an extensive injury list and little option to rotate for a quick turnaround, Unsworth kept faith with the starting XI who had run the National League leaders ever so close.

Fatigue was a factor in those players not hitting the same levels of performance against a Scunthorpe side who had not won away this season, and had to come back from behind to make sure that remained the case.

But it is unlikely that Unsworth will have much scope to freshen things up for this weekend’s trip to Maidenhead.

Some of the injured players are making good progress in their recovery, but tomorrow is expected to come too soon for any of them to make a much needed comeback.

“Potentially next week a couple of them will be back, probably not in time for the weekend’s game,” said the Latics boss.

In the meantime, his focus is on those who are available, and the delicate balance of working them hard to boost fitness, but not overworking them to the extent they burn out, especially in a week where they will have played Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday.

“I had this the second time I took over at Everton and we were in the Europa League and it was impossible to get any training into the boys over that period, and when you come in you need as much time as you can on the training pitch,” Unsworth explained.

“The sessions we’ve had have been brilliant, but then when you’re recovering you’re not doing anything other than just ticking over, having a feel of the ball, and two-day recoveries. It’s not an ideal scenario to come in at, at this period. Everyone will tell you that’s what pre-season’s there for, to embed the way of playing and what you want to do.

“We just have to take every opportunity we can to get on the grass and to show the boys what we’re all about. I’m just desperate to get to Saturday-Saturday games to be honest, have the recovery, you know what you’re going to get on a Saturday in terms of output, you know you can work hard on a Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, you can switch off Thursday and come back in and shape your team on a Friday and that is the ideal week for me.

“We can also have three gym sessions. The boys haven’t been in the gym this week. It’s the same for everybody, obviously, but other people are ahead of us in terms of where they want to be at their clubs because they’ve spent more time there.

“For me it’s all about time. Time on the grass, time spent with them, time monitoring the performance and looking at it and going through it. It’s all a learning process.”

While there were elements of Tuesday night’s performance that left Unsworth hugely frustrated, and in some instances angry, he could equally see the fruits of their training ground labour at times.

“The positives are a good start; set piece goal that we’d worked on; a change of shape and a massive reaction in the second half, getting an equaliser and going on to create opportunities, and we should have won the game,” he said.

“The flaws are there for everybody to see. We don’t have to keep going on about it, I don’t want to go on about it.

“I’ve seen so many encouraging signs.

“I know we’re in the business of winning football matches but there’s periods where you might have to endure a bit of pain to come out of the other side and have a totally different football club.”