Darren Royle - the man tasked with helping to fix Latics' puncture

When you enter his Boundary Park office, you can immediately sense the aura of energy, assuredness, a feeling that the club is being well directed commercially, in safe hands and surrounded by care.

This epitomises the towering figure of 48-year-old Darren Royle, who took over the CEO role at Oldham Athletic after Frank Rothwell bought the club in July and was instrumental in the takeover’s completion.

It is soon clear that Darren brings a quiet confidence that if the right strategy and purpose is put in place, then the future for Oldham Athletic will be a bright one.

“The best analogy I can think of was given by the cricketer Ashley Giles and it applies to the running of a football club,” says Darren.

"It is like the old bicycle, the Penny Farthing.

"You have your small wheel, which is your football part, the match day operations, a team, a squad and it is whizzing round quickly.

"But you also need to manage the big wheel, which is the long-term business, the strategy, the management leadership, the revenue, the finance, the complete football administration, it is going around slower, but you still cannot take your eyes off it.

“So, you have to multitask and say, we have a need to fulfil our fixtures and try and let the football management team have what we can offer.

"Our Penny Farthing is a big wheel with a puncture on it.

"We have to fix that puncture and make sure that it still goes round.”

Darren is openly realistic, recognising there is a lot to do.

“It is no criticism of anyone, it is just the situation," he added.

"The situation around the facilities, we still haven’t got a full-time location base for the academy.

"The stadium needs a lot of repair and maintenance and the new stand integrating back in.

“But if you look back in the days of the Premier League, we were training all over the place, there wasn’t a training ground.”

Asked about a best-case scenario for where Latics would be in the next five years, he mentioned that the club had held a “purposing day” recently to address this

“Part of that was about getting everyone in the club aligned around one dream," he goes on to add.

"A dream to help define what our character and our spirit is.

"And our dream is about providing proper experiences for all in the community.

"It is not just about the club.

"The spirit is very much all Oldham.

"We want all communities to be involved.

"The focus is definitely on winning football matches.

"We want to roll this out across the business so that everybody understands their job and actively contributes towards winning the football match.

"It includes the ground staff, the ball boys, the people in the kiosks serving better food, quicker, which means supporters have a better voice on the terrace and actually become that 12th person.

"There is a huge amount of work just to communicate and implement and ensure it is adopted.

"If we do that, why shouldn’t we realistically get our heads around getting back into the EFL and then League One?

"By that time, we will have built our business back up, and will have integrated a vision that is our dream – our greatest challenge is returning to the EFL.”

It is also said that top quality CEOs surround themselves with equally elite business brains.

Darren has wasted no time in certainly doing that.

Ex-Saatchi chairman Kevin Roberts and acclaimed solicitor Peter Norbury have joined the Rothwell and Royle family on the board, and he has recently appointed ex-Slumberland Financial Director, Paul Rooney, as Chief Financial Officer.

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