Promotion Contenders & Pterodactyls

Well. What a game. The football played by Latics at times was sensational. A sort of Lancastrian Tika-Taka if you will, with Furman & Stephens in the Busquet & Xavi roles and Tounkara as a French David Villa (If David Villa had been raised by wildebeest and fed on nothing but raw pterodactyls flesh since the age of 3).

One of Oumar Tounkara's 5-a-day?

Admittedly I didn't have the greatest view of the game from my seat in a pub in Didsbury, but it seems a safe assumption that  Oldham completely outplayed Charlton and the only reason we didn't get the three points was a combination of bad refereeing, bad luck and cheating Cockneys. In fact the way we got the result is immaterial, as that point keeps Athletic in 2nd place above the likes of Charlton, Sheffield Wednesday, Southampton & Huddersfield. The promotion dream for once looks slightly less ridiculous than Blackpool in the top flight, a team starting the season with two 6-0 wins or an average defensive midfielder getting paid a quarter of a million pounds a week.

The real success so far in Latics' season has got to be Dean Furman, having failed to score in his first 43 games for the club he scored a stunning opener last week against Notts County and by all accounts scored an equally good equalizer today. Paul Dickov seems to have turned a man that last season couldn't hit a cow's arse with a banjo into the lower league Frank Lampard, though admittedly without the lovely Christine Bleakley on his arm.

It's Yeovil Town back at Boundary Park next week and with four of the next five games at home against teams that, with Latics playing as they are, are certainly beatable we could be seeing Athletic remaining in the top two well into September.

Well I suppose it beats watching Dave Penney bore the opposition (and fans) to death.