McDonald: We'll take a point and move on

The Seasiders battled to a 0-0 draw against the second bottom Latics on a freezing cold evening at Bloomfield Road.

In front of what appeared to be the lowest home crowd of the season, Pool struggled to break down the away side’s deep defence.

But in the end McDonald was pleased to have at least taken something from the game.

“It was a hard-earned point, that’s for sure,” said the Blackpool boss.

“Since John Sheridan went into Oldham he’s organised the side and given them a new focus and it showed last night.

“They are a very hard team to score against now, and when we did get a couple of chances we didn’t take them.

“But we gladly take the point and move on.”

Blackpool’s strikers looked isolated all evening with very few openings in front of goal, with Jim McAlister going closest with a header after just five minutes.

Substitute Martin Paterson livened things up late on, but barring his misplaced lob two minutes from time, there was very little to shout about.

McDonald added: “We didn’t play very well when we had the ball. We didn’t pass it as well as I want us to and we didn’t find our men in space quickly enough.

“Oldham worked hard to close us down and it showed.

“We are pleased to get a point, but disappointed we didn’t get the three.”

After conceding three in 29 minutes against Shrewsbury on Saturday, McDonald changed two of his back four, replacing David Ferguson and Emmerson Boyce with Clark Robertson and Hayden White.

And McDonald was pleased with another clean sheet.

“Defensively we were much more solid than we were against Shrewsbury which was pleasing,” he said.

“It was just our finishing which let us down, otherwise we could easily have won the game.”

For Oldham boss John Sheridan it was a frustrating night, especially after watching new striker Curtis Main head a golden chance over the bar with 17 minutes remaining.

He said: “I’m really disappointed we didn’t win the game.

“It was hard to take, I’m down and the lads are down after the game.

“It was a game we tried to win, we had a couple of decent chances and we tried to be positive.”