This week, at least it wasn’t a case of Mickleover-and-out of the FA Trophy as we just about navigated our way past our Southern League Premier Central opponents on penalties after two fine saves from the ever-reliable Mat Hudson.

It was good to see Kurt Willoughby score his first goal for the club with a fine, composed finish, and we can only hope he builds on that after what has been a mixed start to his Oldham career.

We’ve got what, on paper, looks to be a favourable draw in the fourth round, at home to Hendon, as we look to put a run together to hopefully culminate in a visit to Wembley in the final.

However, with that draw comes a big concern and that is with the squad’s mentality against sides who come to Boundary Park knowing it’s one of their biggest games of the season.

This happens regularly to us in the league and it certainly happened on Saturday with Mickleover proclaiming “it’s the big one” in their website’s match preview. Hendon will likely view their visit as similar and, since we got relegated into the National League, we have simply not grasped how to beat these sorts of sides.

No matter what the issues are with the quality of our personnel for the league, the team that started on Saturday was more than capable of putting a side three divisions lower than us to the sword.

For whatever reason, once again, we didn’t match the opposition’s quality but worse, their energy, and Micky Mellon’s post-match interview recognised as much.

It will doubtless be one of the first things on his list to improve; a list that continues to get longer with his repeated recognition that he and Gary Brabin have a lot of work to do with the squad to get them to where they need to be to ultimately challenge for a promotion place back to the Football League.

This will hopefully include some new players. It is clear we are short in a number of areas to attain the consistency of performance and result required.

With the correct additions to the squad, we will also see players who have shown undoubted quality like James Norwood, Shaun Hobson and Josh Lundstram reach the heights of their performance levels on a more regular basis.

These things don’t change overnight and Mellon himself says he needs time to do this but a manager with his experience, expertise and honesty is exactly the type of manager to get us there.

Back to league action on Saturday with a visit to high-flying Solihull Moors as we aim for for a Barnet-style performance and result rather than an Ebbsfleet or a Mickleover.