Oldham Athletic boss Micky Mellon says earning the Latics’ first promotion in 34 years will awaken his “monster of a club”.
Mellon’s side scored two quickfire goals in the second half of extra-time to win an epic National League promotion final against Southend at Wembley on Sunday.
It was the Scot’s third promotion to the EFL as a manager – equalling John Still’s record – and sixth overall in his career in football.
And the 53-year-old said it would have a seismic impact on the whole club.
Mellon told Sport: “It’s an unbelievable achievement to turn it round and get a result from where we were. It’s a fantastic moment for us.
“This club is a monster. We were under a lot of pressure because we have a great family that back us – we needed to go up.
“It makes so much difference to everything about Oldham as a football club, we can really build forward behind the scenes now.
“It’s massive, it’s monstrous to get us in [the league]. Everything changes now for the club.”
Oldham – whose last promotion came, to the top flight, in 1991 – were backed by more than 20,000 travelling fans in a record crowd of 52,115 and Mellon said it showed the gap between the National League and EFL is narrower than ever.
He said: “There are some really big clubs in the National League who have been allowed to stagnate.
“York should have gone up automatically. You can’t win that amount of points (96) and not go up automatically. It should be three up, three down. Teams like York and Southend would make the EFL better.
“I think the EFL has got to hand an olive branch out to its original members who are struggling.
“I’ve been in League Two and there are teams there who are not as ambitious or as big as those in the National League. It’s got to change.”
Mellon admitted his club would be behind in terms of preparing for next season – with little more than two months until it starts – and expects his players to return to training in as little as four weeks.
He said: “In terms of recruitment we are so many weeks behind. It’s crazy. We’re going to have to be back training in about four weeks. That’ll be tough but we would certainly have taken it.
“We’ll need to sit and organise properly but it’s something I am not too disappointed about having to do.
“We recruited a lot of these boys because we believed if we went up we’d be OK – we have a lot of league players there.
“We have been doing little bits behind the scenes, guys we’d have brought in anyway, but it does open things up a bit because a lot of people say ‘I want to be in the league’ so maybe it opens up a recruitment pull and makes it a lot better for trying to move this club forward.”
