KEITH Curle is confident Latics’ approach in the transfer market will pay off with the countdown on to the start of the new season.

Oldham have made six additions to their squad this summer as Curle looks to reshape a squad that finished 18th in League Two last time out.

Five of those signings – Hallam Hope, Jordan Clarke, Harrison McGahey, Sam Hart and Jayson Leutwiler – were announced back on June 22.

Just Alan Sheehan, as a player-coach, has been added to that since then with Curle running the rule over a host of trialists.

Former skipper Dean Furman has turned down a Boundary Park return, believing he can get a better financial offer elsewhere having appeared in a number of friendlies.

But Curle, working with sporting director Mo Lemsagam, insists he trusts the process eight days out from Newport County visiting Boundary Park on the opening day.

“It’s a work in progress,” he said.

“It would have been excellent to go out and do our recruitment in the first week as soon as the season ended and get all our players lined up and get them all signed and then go and relax and wait until August 7.

“It doesn’t work like that and we’ve got room in the budget, room in the changing room, to add to the vision that we’ve got as a football team, a football squad and a football club.”

A large part of the recruitment process has been trying to add more experience and knowhow to a dressing room that was lacking in EFL games under first Harry Kewell and then Curle for the final couple of months of a disappointing season.

The first batch of signings fit that bill with the Latics boss determined to get the right characters through the door.

“When I came in, I think it was the Cambridge game (a 4-2 defeat on March 13), and we counted up the amount of professional league starts the opposition had and they were something like 2,600 from their starting XI and we had something like 730 and Nicky Adams had played 530 of them,” Curle said.

“It showed there was a lack of experience and part of our recruitment process was bringing in players that have played league football, played at a higher level, but still had the hunger that their journey hadn’t finished and they wanted to join a football club on the start of a journey.”