Unfortunately the blog this season has been as infrequent as Saturday afternoons at Brisbane Road. Various issues have prevented me getting online for a few weeks. I'm afraid there be nothing next week either because I'll be in Belfast seeing Glentoran on Saturday and Ulster v Castres Olympique in the rugby. So talking of Saturday afternoon's at Brisbane Road and the Olympiques - segue>
I could talk about another tedious afternoons viewing but the news that the Os were about to officially become London's favourite team seemed to attract far more interest this week. Naturally the hardcore fans were outraged and everyone else was generally amused. No doubt one of those French rugby players would just shrug his shoulders and exclaim "c'est la vie". After a little while most were dismissing it as a gimmick but made the mistake it thinking it came from the same place as celebrity red carpet walk ons and Simply The Best.
The Olympic Stadium legacy debate changed once the Olympics had actually taken place. The Olympics and everything connected to it, including the, venues became ours. It's no longer a pain in the backside, it's something most people loved. It felt like the contractors handed the keys over to the public rather than LOCOG. A Games lacking in superficial glitz and glamour was a spectacular success thanks to the life that people breathed into it. The idea of then handing over a whole Stadium filled with memories, to a Premiership football club with more money at their disposal than many of the Olympic sporting bodies suddenly became something people felt strongly about. Football was no longer not the only game in town, it was the least appealling.
If they had announced that the Stadium was going to be taken away from us and given to West Ham in the last 6 weeks there would have been an outcry. People want the chance to go back again (or go for the first time), sooner than the 2017 Athletics World Championships. Many of them aren't football fans, in fact plenty are probably increasingly repulsed by it, whether that be because of the disproportionate amounts of money and coverage it attracts or the tawdry behaviour of the highest profile participants. You could actually link those two up, as most of the coverage and most of the money seems to go to football's worst offenders. The most public face of football isn't a pretty one.
West Ham quickly recognised this. Their arrogant bid had until recently been based on the fact that the Mayor of London couldn't afford NOT to give them the Stadium because there were no straightforward viable alternatives. They've not tempered the arrogance, publicly announcing the conditions under which they would and wouldn't be willing to accept this multi-million pound gift from the public purse, including sharing the facility with anyone else. They did though launch a cheap exercise which bizarrely claimed that they were the centre of the East London community before the Games and that giving them the Stadium would lead to them identifying the future East London Olympians of the future. That is all it was though, a PR exercise. Their trump card still remains that they are the only single entity that can guarantee filling at least half of the Stadium in its reconfigured state on a regular basis.
Barry Hearn knows that he has only one chance of moving Orient into the Olympic Park. We need to be a big piece of a jigsaw of users of the Stadium when it is re-opened. Few details of Orient's bid have been revealed until this point under secrecy agreements that form part of the bidding process. I don't know what it means that some details have leaked out this week. I have been certain from the start though that it contains two big elements. Firstly, that the stadium will have to be temporarily configured (by use of curtains or something more innovative) so that there aren't 55,000 empty seats visible each week. Secondly, that the proposal will include ideas for use by others entities as well, some of which have been mooted before. If Orient feature in the Stadium's future, so will concerts, athletics, rugby, cricket and probably and whole host of other events. The Stadium will be open to as many Londoners as possible. People will get the chance to enjoy the facility because it won't have a single use. Some might even realise that football exists beyond John Terry and come and find out about us.
Hearn hopes to tap into this by rebranding the club as London Orient to fit in with its new place in the capital's sporting landscape. An insult to our history claim some. That history includes being called Clapton Orient and just Orient and playing in blue, white and red shirts. Things change. I don't feel that losing Leyton from our name is that big a deal. The majority of the fan base have no connection with Leyton beyond the club itself. Most ARE from London though. The more I thought about it on Friday the more I thought about how proud I'd be for our name to be a combination of the unique part of our club's name (Orient) and the place that I was actually born in. Would it, by itself, attract fans? I doubt it. But it would be symbolic of what we are about. Playing in a publicy owned stadium, named after the city that owns that stadium, owned and run by it's own supporters...OK, maybe that is a pipe dream!
Obviously Hearn has his own motives for wanting the move but that isn't to say that they don't coincide with the best interests for the club in all cases. No one knows for certain what impact West Ham moving to the stadium will have on us, or what the future would hold for Orient if we moved there. Any decision Barry Hearn makes in the next few years will be a gamble, with the stakes probably much higher than for any of his other decisions during his tenure. But he is a man who has successfully changed the face of other sporting entities during his career, seeking to link up with the organisers of one the most successful sporting events the world has seen. It isn't beyond the realms of possibility that they could create the circumstances neccesary to make the future of the Olympic Stadium a fruitful one.
Sunday 7 October 2012
Sunday 9 September 2012
Reasons to be temporarily cheerful
With three points finally in the bag yesterday, open warfare on Russell Slade was temporarily suspended. Even those that had travelled to Swindon all psyched up to hurl abuse at the no longer loved boss had to put their plans on ice as the Os started well. Once Lee Cook bagged the win even the most vociforous knew it'd be churlish to go ahead with their protests and they could wait for another day. Of course the gaffer is from from off the hook but at least our nose dive start was arrested and that first win of the season is always crucial. Thank god it came much earlier than it did last year because I don't think he'd have been able to hold on to his job for as long this season.
There are encouraging signs for Orient after a bad start that we've not entirely recovered from yet. At this point goals seem as important as wins and the absence of a single goal from open play until yesterday is extremely concerning. That may change over time though, if we can keep picking up wins. The promotion season was founded on countless one-goal wins and it is clear that Slade feels most comfortable shutting up shop and snatching wins from few chances. It is a tactic that has had us tearing our hair out because we aren't good enough defensively and don't have strikers capable of scoring unless given at least 3 or 4 chances. All we've been doing for the best part of 6 months is inviting teams onto us who have eventually picked us apart.
Slade's late signings may have seen a turn of fortunes and maybe even tactics if yesterday is anything to go by. I thought the reaction to last week's defeat at Crawley seemed well over the top. Lee Cook and Martin Rowlands are two quality signings. If some of our other aquisitions over the last 12 months have been underwhelming, I don't think it is unreasonable to say the two ex-QPR players exceed our expectations of the sort of player we can attract. Their introduction made an immediate impact against Crawley and at last we looked a threat - albeit until it came to applying the finish when we still looked blunt. But both are short of match fitness and their withdrawal led to a downturn in fortunes and Crawley grabbing the win.
The two were able to put in a longer shift yesterday and a solid first half was followed up by a positive second period, when Swindon were reduced to a brief flurry of chances at the start and some inevitable late pressure. But the little bit of class needed belonged to Lee Cook who applied a classy finish to Leon McSweeney's (remember him?) cross and it was enough to take the points. There is every reason to believe that we can get stronger game by game as he does.
What is concerning is that our fortunes are so closely linked to two players we've only been able to sign on short term contracts. We look so much better defensively when we have a genuine attacking threat and either Slade has just realised this or is more comfortable with a more positive line up with Cook and Rowlands in the side than he is with other players. Hopefully we can build on that and Cook and Rowlands will both stay for the season. However, if they are too good and others pick them up in January we need to be thinking of our plan C if we're not to plummet in the second half of the season again. Because there is one thing we can say with some certainty from the last 6 months - Russell's plan B doesn't work and we either need to replace the quality we'd lose or find a different system.
There are encouraging signs for Orient after a bad start that we've not entirely recovered from yet. At this point goals seem as important as wins and the absence of a single goal from open play until yesterday is extremely concerning. That may change over time though, if we can keep picking up wins. The promotion season was founded on countless one-goal wins and it is clear that Slade feels most comfortable shutting up shop and snatching wins from few chances. It is a tactic that has had us tearing our hair out because we aren't good enough defensively and don't have strikers capable of scoring unless given at least 3 or 4 chances. All we've been doing for the best part of 6 months is inviting teams onto us who have eventually picked us apart.
Slade's late signings may have seen a turn of fortunes and maybe even tactics if yesterday is anything to go by. I thought the reaction to last week's defeat at Crawley seemed well over the top. Lee Cook and Martin Rowlands are two quality signings. If some of our other aquisitions over the last 12 months have been underwhelming, I don't think it is unreasonable to say the two ex-QPR players exceed our expectations of the sort of player we can attract. Their introduction made an immediate impact against Crawley and at last we looked a threat - albeit until it came to applying the finish when we still looked blunt. But both are short of match fitness and their withdrawal led to a downturn in fortunes and Crawley grabbing the win.
The two were able to put in a longer shift yesterday and a solid first half was followed up by a positive second period, when Swindon were reduced to a brief flurry of chances at the start and some inevitable late pressure. But the little bit of class needed belonged to Lee Cook who applied a classy finish to Leon McSweeney's (remember him?) cross and it was enough to take the points. There is every reason to believe that we can get stronger game by game as he does.
What is concerning is that our fortunes are so closely linked to two players we've only been able to sign on short term contracts. We look so much better defensively when we have a genuine attacking threat and either Slade has just realised this or is more comfortable with a more positive line up with Cook and Rowlands in the side than he is with other players. Hopefully we can build on that and Cook and Rowlands will both stay for the season. However, if they are too good and others pick them up in January we need to be thinking of our plan C if we're not to plummet in the second half of the season again. Because there is one thing we can say with some certainty from the last 6 months - Russell's plan B doesn't work and we either need to replace the quality we'd lose or find a different system.
Sunday 26 August 2012
Moan, jeer, boo, moan
Even in a normal year I am more than happy to shut off all thoughts of Orient during the summer, especially after the sort of season we had last year. I have no interest in wild transfer speculation about players I can't pretend to have anything more than a vague recollection of maybe seeing play a couple of times. I gave up on pre-season friendlies a long time ago as they are almost uniformly dull and completely meaningless. Ironically after yesterday's postponement I sat and watched a 10 v 10, Orient v Orient training match and it was 100 times more competitive than any friendly I've attended at Brisbane Road.
Of course this isn't a normal year and the three weeks leading into the season were dominated by the Olympic Games in our back yard. I ended up being even more cut off from Orient news than ever before. The fact it had to end was bad enough but the fact it was to be followed up by a football season felt, by comparison, thoroughly depressing. A lot has been made of the "Olympic athlete good, professional footballer bad" debate but it goes deeper than that. It was the general atmosphere around the games at all of the venues (and I was lucky enough to be at most of them). In a nutshell I'd put it as the overwhelming positive and sporting atmosphere of the Olympic crowds, verses the cynical and pessimistic average football crowd. A prime example is the first morning of Jessica Ennis' heptathlon and the high jump competition. The support for Ennis and every British athlete was deafening and turned up to 11 for Ennis. However, as the competition drew to a conclusion with only a few athletes left jumping the crowd was behind every single one of them, whether they were British, Lithuanian or American. Clearances were cheered and failures met with disappointment.
Compare that to supporters of Chelsea and Liverpool, to name just two teams, offering unequivocal support for their players regardless of what they did. Or closer to home, Os fans jeering Brentford's injured goalkeeper at Griffin Park in 2011, taunting him because it meant he would miss playing at Wembley the following week. Football is a different sort of sport (which should be added to the long list of reasons as to why it shouldn't be part of the Olympics schedule) and no one expects fans to cheer on the other team. But it IS a sport and a sport whose image would be greatly improved if fans, players and managers remembered that every once in a while.
For every bad example I can recall there is a good one as well. Cyrille Regis being given a standing ovation at Brisbane Road when he was substituted playing for Chester City in his last season as a pro for one. It would be nice if the ratio was a bit more in favour of the positive though. I spent 7 or 8 years travelling to every away game in the supporters club coach but gave it up after the promotion season. Why would I do that after slogging around the 'cosy' League 2 grounds 'steeped in character'? Because even 2 or 3 games from the end of that season no one was enjoying it. They'd spend the entire return journeys complaining and moaning about what we'd just witnessed - as we sat in the top 3! I get enough of people spending all day moaning at work, I didn't need it at weekends as well and so I started to enjoy free Saturday's away from football.
My desire to see Brisbane Road a more positive and vibrant cathedral of sport is probably never more likely to fall on deaf ears than now. I've dragged myself to Brisbane Road twice and seen a dire performance against Stevenage off the back of an opening day thrashing at Tranmere and then a postponement followed by a lengthy thunderstorm. This off of the back of a dreadful season as we stumbled our way to safety and a summer that has seen ballers replaced by brawlers. Russell Slade has said he thinks that our league has moved from a division where passing can thrive, to a more physical competition. He has therefore got a like for like replacement for Stephen Dawson but doesn't think he can do the same with Matthew Spring.
All goodwill for the manager and most of the team was entirely used up last season and the fans are now on a short fuse. I don't have a problem with that, after last season I also expect to see a quick improvement. The only problem is that operating in that sort of negative environment is never conducive to success and we could end up all talking ourselves into a downward spiral that we're unable to stop. The biggest complaint has been the lack of any sort of creativity in the team and maybe the signing of Lee Cook to address that should lead to a short amnesty to at least give the team a chance. I came away from the Stevenage game without anything to feel positive about but the fact is that Russell Slade will be given a certain amount of time to get things right this season and I'd prefer we suspended disbelief and willed the team to succeed rather than wait for us to fail. Otherwise I and probably most fans will be dreading going to Brisbane Road for quite a while.
Of course this isn't a normal year and the three weeks leading into the season were dominated by the Olympic Games in our back yard. I ended up being even more cut off from Orient news than ever before. The fact it had to end was bad enough but the fact it was to be followed up by a football season felt, by comparison, thoroughly depressing. A lot has been made of the "Olympic athlete good, professional footballer bad" debate but it goes deeper than that. It was the general atmosphere around the games at all of the venues (and I was lucky enough to be at most of them). In a nutshell I'd put it as the overwhelming positive and sporting atmosphere of the Olympic crowds, verses the cynical and pessimistic average football crowd. A prime example is the first morning of Jessica Ennis' heptathlon and the high jump competition. The support for Ennis and every British athlete was deafening and turned up to 11 for Ennis. However, as the competition drew to a conclusion with only a few athletes left jumping the crowd was behind every single one of them, whether they were British, Lithuanian or American. Clearances were cheered and failures met with disappointment.
Compare that to supporters of Chelsea and Liverpool, to name just two teams, offering unequivocal support for their players regardless of what they did. Or closer to home, Os fans jeering Brentford's injured goalkeeper at Griffin Park in 2011, taunting him because it meant he would miss playing at Wembley the following week. Football is a different sort of sport (which should be added to the long list of reasons as to why it shouldn't be part of the Olympics schedule) and no one expects fans to cheer on the other team. But it IS a sport and a sport whose image would be greatly improved if fans, players and managers remembered that every once in a while.
For every bad example I can recall there is a good one as well. Cyrille Regis being given a standing ovation at Brisbane Road when he was substituted playing for Chester City in his last season as a pro for one. It would be nice if the ratio was a bit more in favour of the positive though. I spent 7 or 8 years travelling to every away game in the supporters club coach but gave it up after the promotion season. Why would I do that after slogging around the 'cosy' League 2 grounds 'steeped in character'? Because even 2 or 3 games from the end of that season no one was enjoying it. They'd spend the entire return journeys complaining and moaning about what we'd just witnessed - as we sat in the top 3! I get enough of people spending all day moaning at work, I didn't need it at weekends as well and so I started to enjoy free Saturday's away from football.
My desire to see Brisbane Road a more positive and vibrant cathedral of sport is probably never more likely to fall on deaf ears than now. I've dragged myself to Brisbane Road twice and seen a dire performance against Stevenage off the back of an opening day thrashing at Tranmere and then a postponement followed by a lengthy thunderstorm. This off of the back of a dreadful season as we stumbled our way to safety and a summer that has seen ballers replaced by brawlers. Russell Slade has said he thinks that our league has moved from a division where passing can thrive, to a more physical competition. He has therefore got a like for like replacement for Stephen Dawson but doesn't think he can do the same with Matthew Spring.
All goodwill for the manager and most of the team was entirely used up last season and the fans are now on a short fuse. I don't have a problem with that, after last season I also expect to see a quick improvement. The only problem is that operating in that sort of negative environment is never conducive to success and we could end up all talking ourselves into a downward spiral that we're unable to stop. The biggest complaint has been the lack of any sort of creativity in the team and maybe the signing of Lee Cook to address that should lead to a short amnesty to at least give the team a chance. I came away from the Stevenage game without anything to feel positive about but the fact is that Russell Slade will be given a certain amount of time to get things right this season and I'd prefer we suspended disbelief and willed the team to succeed rather than wait for us to fail. Otherwise I and probably most fans will be dreading going to Brisbane Road for quite a while.
Monday 7 May 2012
The Final Word
It would probably be easier to write a book about what went wrong with Orient's season than to try to cover it in a single blog. The only difficulty with writing it would be that so much appears to have gone wrong behind the scenes that trying to piece it together from the outside with any degree of certainty is impossible.
The signs were there right from the end of the season. The fact that Jamie Jones tweeted his surprise at the release of Scott McGleish doesn't suggest there was open revolt, it is more a reflection on twitter and how players use it. But you got the impression that there were two leaders in the dressing room, McGleish and Stephen Dawson. No one would slack off with Dawson around and no one at the club was bigger than McGleish. Maybe Russell Slade felt that the latter wasn't conducive to team spirit but I believe it had the effect of keeping everyone elses egos in check and the players all seemed to respect McGleish. But there are stories like that at the end of every season and they're soon forgotten about as the new season starts.
I was far more concerned when the players went off to Las Vegas at the start of the season, a reward for getting a replay with Arsenal and a great team building opportunity. The fact two players stayed behind was a cause for concern - in the first instance because it may have been a precursor to them leaving shortly and then later because it seemed odd that they simply didn't want to go on the trip. Revell's performances last season were solid, Rotherham (hardly a club awash with money) were willing to pay a transfer fee for him and we didn't have a replacement for him, all of which suggest he didn't leave because of a lack of ability. As the end of the first transfer window came, the warning signs from the Vegas trip came to fruition as he departed to Yorkshire. It may have simply been because a transfer fee was offered (which it could have been if you look at the later departure of Dawson), because he wanted away for his own reasons, the manager didn't want him in the squad or a combination of two or all of those reasons. There isn't necessarily a salacious story behind it, maybe the chemistry that was there last season simply wasn't this and it suited all parties.
As the season went on (although for Orient it didn't start until October), we continued to be a victim of our own success. The loan players who did so well for us last year were retained by Tottenham to feature in their Europa League campaign and then later loaned to Championship clubs. Charlie Daniels was the next to be poached, at least doubling his wages at Bournemouth and earning the club a decent transfer fee. I'm all for having a go at Ashley Cole for not being able to manage on his 'paltry' wages at Arsenal but it is a bit different on the sort of wages he'd be on at this level. Daniels would be an idiot to turn down an offer to play at Margate if they offered him £3k more than he was on at Orient. Then our biggest diamond was plucked by Barnsley and suddenly not only had we lost all but one of our truly outstanding players from one year ago, we lost the driving force in the heart of the team and Russell Slade had to find someone new to take his bins out. If you thought it couldn't get any worse we also lost a decent right back, still now spending time at Her Majesty's displeasure and thanks to injuries we've had more keepers at Brisbane Road than they have at London Zoo.
If there has been criticism of Slade that has been particularly harsh this year it is his record with signings and I don't think it is the quality of individual players that has been the problem. Some unsuccessful moves stand out. Jamie Cureton just couldn't cut it and didn't look able to hit the target even if it was doubled in size. Tom Clarke was very ordinary and there are simply no words to describe Calvin Andrew or the emergency signing of Paul Rachubka. But he has also signed player of the year Scott Cuthbert, Lee Cook probably the most talented person to grace the shirt this season, Syam Ben Youssef who shows great potential, Tony Craig who did well enough to be recalled to Millwall, Adam Reed who belied his young age and showed he is a tidy player already, Adam Chicksen also good enough to be recalled by MK Dons, Leon McSweeney who has played well out of position and was willing to play through the pain barrier at the end of the season and Jamal Campbell-Ryce who was key to what attacking play we did manage in the run in. I don't think that is a bad ratio of good to bad and there are only so many good players that the manager can be expected to keep replacing!
There are plenty of others who did OK but who I think have simply not played to their full potential due to playing out of position (Mooney, Leacock) injuries (Taiwo), suspension (Dickson, Taiwo, Dickson again) or simply by not being given the games to hit their stride (Laird). Everyone will have their hate figures and their favourites but I didn't start this blog to slate players or managers. Our problem was that last season we had some consistency, some truly outstanding performers and a good squad of players around them to support them. In the latter half of this season we've had too many supporting actors but not enough leading lights. I do believe the worst decision of the season was allowing Dawson to go, especially if the sole reason was to pick up a transfer fee for someone who was due to be out of contract. He was such a vital part of the team and that money would have been swallowed up by the losses incurred by getting relegated. Once he had had gone I don't believe Slade could have done much better than getting players or Reed and Taiwo's standard in. It simply isn't possible to loan in a player anywhere near as good as Dawson.
Russell Slade will probably never get the credit for digging the team out of a huge mess after a terrible start. Can anyone honestly say that on the 30 September 2011 they ever thought we'd get out of the relegation zone at all? Unfortunately though when we went into a double dip it nearly had disastrous consequences. Even with a lack of star players there is no way this squad of players should have finished where we did in the table and so you have to look at how the team was lined up and asked to play. For one thing we simply ran out of full backs and then latterly lost our best centre back Scott Cuthbert. As a result we started to look very shaky at the back and Slade's response was to be very cautious with his tactics. You're on a hiding to nothing when you find yourself having to plug things up to simply avoid conceding goals. Go out offensively and you're leaving a weak defence exposed. Try to protect them and you are just inviting pressure on yourselves and something will give eventually. That is exactly what happened game after game, as the floodgates regularly gave way around the hour mark.
Finally at the end of a season that saw him deprived of players over and over again the gaffer simply had no idea what his best team was anymore. Trying to find what players work best in what system in pre-season is easy (ish!), especially when you've spent the last six months studying the new players strengths and weaknesses and brought them in at a time of your choose. Doing that in front of the fans against competitive teams is a different kettle of fish. He ended up choosing eleven players who mightn't light up a game but he felt they were the players who wouldn't let him down, even if it meant playing them out of position. But again you are on a slippery slope when you find yourself having to select a team with that sort of negative mindset. Players like Leacock, who I thought looked fine in defence, were asked to play in midfield, which didn't particularly strengthen the midfield and weakened the defence. Jimmy Smith, whose greatest strength is scoring goals from midfield was asked to play in the holding position in front of the back four. He was unsuited to it and found himself following the ball because that is his game further up the park but it exposed the centre backs in the process. I don't think there were any right answers to the hand that the season dealt us, only part of which was of our own doing. We basically ended up in a mess that nearly overwhelmed us as the injuries and suspensions stacked up. We're not a top 5 team who could throw money at problems or have a squad prepared for any eventuality - an Orient manager is always going to have to make do and mend.
Somehow we have got to the end of the season with our League One status intact. This may well have been the toughest season of Russell Slade's managerial career and he will be stronger for it - after a break! The fact that he held on until the end of the season suggests he has Barry Hearn's full support and will have been scouting and planning for next season in the knowledge he will still be here. Forget the fact he has a two year contract, there is no way in the world that doesn't contain release clauses that would allow a parting of the ways without paying up that full 2 years. It is funny how Barry gets accused of being too hard-nosed and then too generous with contracts almost in the same breath! Slade isn't infallible but I trust him when it comes to bringing players in, building a squad and getting them to play way above expectations. Last year didn't happen by luck. I also believe that whatever he got wrong and right there are other managers who wouldn't have coped with everything that was thrown at him and would have either walked away or turned on the players or fans. At all times Russell has behaved with dignity and composure, despite clearly hurting that nothing he tried seemed to work. The best thing about getting to the end of the season is that the slate gets wiped clean, bridges can be mended and everyone gets a chance to reflect on what could have been done better. Luckily the break is long enough to fit it all in.
The one plea I would make is that we don't go into next season talking about how long Slade has to get it right. That sort of pressure will only have a negative effect on everyone at the club. Enjoy your summer and genuine heartfelt thanks to everyone who has read these ramblings and said nice things about the blog. It really does mean a lot and makes the inordinate amount of time it takes to work out what the hell is wrong with Leyton Orient all worthwhile.
The signs were there right from the end of the season. The fact that Jamie Jones tweeted his surprise at the release of Scott McGleish doesn't suggest there was open revolt, it is more a reflection on twitter and how players use it. But you got the impression that there were two leaders in the dressing room, McGleish and Stephen Dawson. No one would slack off with Dawson around and no one at the club was bigger than McGleish. Maybe Russell Slade felt that the latter wasn't conducive to team spirit but I believe it had the effect of keeping everyone elses egos in check and the players all seemed to respect McGleish. But there are stories like that at the end of every season and they're soon forgotten about as the new season starts.
I was far more concerned when the players went off to Las Vegas at the start of the season, a reward for getting a replay with Arsenal and a great team building opportunity. The fact two players stayed behind was a cause for concern - in the first instance because it may have been a precursor to them leaving shortly and then later because it seemed odd that they simply didn't want to go on the trip. Revell's performances last season were solid, Rotherham (hardly a club awash with money) were willing to pay a transfer fee for him and we didn't have a replacement for him, all of which suggest he didn't leave because of a lack of ability. As the end of the first transfer window came, the warning signs from the Vegas trip came to fruition as he departed to Yorkshire. It may have simply been because a transfer fee was offered (which it could have been if you look at the later departure of Dawson), because he wanted away for his own reasons, the manager didn't want him in the squad or a combination of two or all of those reasons. There isn't necessarily a salacious story behind it, maybe the chemistry that was there last season simply wasn't this and it suited all parties.
As the season went on (although for Orient it didn't start until October), we continued to be a victim of our own success. The loan players who did so well for us last year were retained by Tottenham to feature in their Europa League campaign and then later loaned to Championship clubs. Charlie Daniels was the next to be poached, at least doubling his wages at Bournemouth and earning the club a decent transfer fee. I'm all for having a go at Ashley Cole for not being able to manage on his 'paltry' wages at Arsenal but it is a bit different on the sort of wages he'd be on at this level. Daniels would be an idiot to turn down an offer to play at Margate if they offered him £3k more than he was on at Orient. Then our biggest diamond was plucked by Barnsley and suddenly not only had we lost all but one of our truly outstanding players from one year ago, we lost the driving force in the heart of the team and Russell Slade had to find someone new to take his bins out. If you thought it couldn't get any worse we also lost a decent right back, still now spending time at Her Majesty's displeasure and thanks to injuries we've had more keepers at Brisbane Road than they have at London Zoo.
If there has been criticism of Slade that has been particularly harsh this year it is his record with signings and I don't think it is the quality of individual players that has been the problem. Some unsuccessful moves stand out. Jamie Cureton just couldn't cut it and didn't look able to hit the target even if it was doubled in size. Tom Clarke was very ordinary and there are simply no words to describe Calvin Andrew or the emergency signing of Paul Rachubka. But he has also signed player of the year Scott Cuthbert, Lee Cook probably the most talented person to grace the shirt this season, Syam Ben Youssef who shows great potential, Tony Craig who did well enough to be recalled to Millwall, Adam Reed who belied his young age and showed he is a tidy player already, Adam Chicksen also good enough to be recalled by MK Dons, Leon McSweeney who has played well out of position and was willing to play through the pain barrier at the end of the season and Jamal Campbell-Ryce who was key to what attacking play we did manage in the run in. I don't think that is a bad ratio of good to bad and there are only so many good players that the manager can be expected to keep replacing!
There are plenty of others who did OK but who I think have simply not played to their full potential due to playing out of position (Mooney, Leacock) injuries (Taiwo), suspension (Dickson, Taiwo, Dickson again) or simply by not being given the games to hit their stride (Laird). Everyone will have their hate figures and their favourites but I didn't start this blog to slate players or managers. Our problem was that last season we had some consistency, some truly outstanding performers and a good squad of players around them to support them. In the latter half of this season we've had too many supporting actors but not enough leading lights. I do believe the worst decision of the season was allowing Dawson to go, especially if the sole reason was to pick up a transfer fee for someone who was due to be out of contract. He was such a vital part of the team and that money would have been swallowed up by the losses incurred by getting relegated. Once he had had gone I don't believe Slade could have done much better than getting players or Reed and Taiwo's standard in. It simply isn't possible to loan in a player anywhere near as good as Dawson.
Russell Slade will probably never get the credit for digging the team out of a huge mess after a terrible start. Can anyone honestly say that on the 30 September 2011 they ever thought we'd get out of the relegation zone at all? Unfortunately though when we went into a double dip it nearly had disastrous consequences. Even with a lack of star players there is no way this squad of players should have finished where we did in the table and so you have to look at how the team was lined up and asked to play. For one thing we simply ran out of full backs and then latterly lost our best centre back Scott Cuthbert. As a result we started to look very shaky at the back and Slade's response was to be very cautious with his tactics. You're on a hiding to nothing when you find yourself having to plug things up to simply avoid conceding goals. Go out offensively and you're leaving a weak defence exposed. Try to protect them and you are just inviting pressure on yourselves and something will give eventually. That is exactly what happened game after game, as the floodgates regularly gave way around the hour mark.
Finally at the end of a season that saw him deprived of players over and over again the gaffer simply had no idea what his best team was anymore. Trying to find what players work best in what system in pre-season is easy (ish!), especially when you've spent the last six months studying the new players strengths and weaknesses and brought them in at a time of your choose. Doing that in front of the fans against competitive teams is a different kettle of fish. He ended up choosing eleven players who mightn't light up a game but he felt they were the players who wouldn't let him down, even if it meant playing them out of position. But again you are on a slippery slope when you find yourself having to select a team with that sort of negative mindset. Players like Leacock, who I thought looked fine in defence, were asked to play in midfield, which didn't particularly strengthen the midfield and weakened the defence. Jimmy Smith, whose greatest strength is scoring goals from midfield was asked to play in the holding position in front of the back four. He was unsuited to it and found himself following the ball because that is his game further up the park but it exposed the centre backs in the process. I don't think there were any right answers to the hand that the season dealt us, only part of which was of our own doing. We basically ended up in a mess that nearly overwhelmed us as the injuries and suspensions stacked up. We're not a top 5 team who could throw money at problems or have a squad prepared for any eventuality - an Orient manager is always going to have to make do and mend.
Somehow we have got to the end of the season with our League One status intact. This may well have been the toughest season of Russell Slade's managerial career and he will be stronger for it - after a break! The fact that he held on until the end of the season suggests he has Barry Hearn's full support and will have been scouting and planning for next season in the knowledge he will still be here. Forget the fact he has a two year contract, there is no way in the world that doesn't contain release clauses that would allow a parting of the ways without paying up that full 2 years. It is funny how Barry gets accused of being too hard-nosed and then too generous with contracts almost in the same breath! Slade isn't infallible but I trust him when it comes to bringing players in, building a squad and getting them to play way above expectations. Last year didn't happen by luck. I also believe that whatever he got wrong and right there are other managers who wouldn't have coped with everything that was thrown at him and would have either walked away or turned on the players or fans. At all times Russell has behaved with dignity and composure, despite clearly hurting that nothing he tried seemed to work. The best thing about getting to the end of the season is that the slate gets wiped clean, bridges can be mended and everyone gets a chance to reflect on what could have been done better. Luckily the break is long enough to fit it all in.
The one plea I would make is that we don't go into next season talking about how long Slade has to get it right. That sort of pressure will only have a negative effect on everyone at the club. Enjoy your summer and genuine heartfelt thanks to everyone who has read these ramblings and said nice things about the blog. It really does mean a lot and makes the inordinate amount of time it takes to work out what the hell is wrong with Leyton Orient all worthwhile.
Sunday 22 April 2012
They Thought It Was All Over
The deflating nature of Orient's collapse against a poor Yeovil side obscures the fact that the Os are in a better position than I predicted with two games of the season left. 3 games ago I looked at the fixtures of each of the teams and could easily see Orient in the bottom four after a defeat to Yeovil. Unfortunately my prediction that Orient would only pick up 1 point from the next three games was correct (against Yeovil rather than Exeter as it turned out) but on the plus side Wycombe have done the same despite having winnable games against Oldham and Chesterfield. No doubt right now Wycombe fans feel the same as Orient's- that their team is in a position it deserves to be in.
What appeared to be another negative Orient home team selection turned out to actually be quite positive - in a way. Although lining up with an apparent front pairing of Jamal Campbell-Ryce and Kevin Lisbie, the former either dropped deep or went wide looking for the ball. In effect Lisbie was still leading the line by himself but he was supported with Campbell-Ryce filling the gulf between him and the midfield and Matthew Spring getting forward as much as possible. Campbell-Ryce's role had the added bonus of also bringing Dean Cox into the game in the right positions as Cox overlapped with the Jamaican whenever he was on the ball. Sadly Orient's crossing wasn't all it could have been but when Cox did come up with the sort of delivery we expect it fell plum on Lisbie's head for the first goal.
There was so much more to the Orient performance than formations as they looked to fight their way out of danger. Matthew Spring deserves huge credit for the effort he put in and the team followed suit. Spring was provided cover for the back four when he was needed, played the simple short balls in the centre of the park when we needed a cool head and got up to support Lisbie when we attacked. It was a superb effort from the captain, leading by example when it was needed most. For the first time in months the rest of the team showed the same kind of energy and they deserved their half time lead. Despite Jamie Jones making two world class saves, Orient made most of the running and should have extended their lead before half time. Spirit and determination overcame the deficiencies that have plunged Orient into a relegation fight in a scrappy first half. It was obvious to everyone that we needed to continue playing at the same tempo in the second half if they were to enjoy similar success.
Of course we didn't and Yeovil looked surprised to be back in the game, spurning some early chances. From the start of the second half the signs were there that time wasting and slowing the game down wasn't the way to go. Orient ended up looking like England in an international tournament, abandoning the style of play that worked for them in favour of something that exposes their weaknesses. We started losing possession and making silly mistakes, seemingly losing their focus as soon as they took their foot off the pedal.
Ironically having weathered the early rally what should have been the high point of Orient's dismal season ended up being the worst thing that could have happened. When Lisbie applied the finish to the easiest goal he will ever score the relief around Brisbane Road was palpable. Wycome were losing, Orient were in front by two goals and Yeovil heads went down. What could go wrong now? Orient started enjoying some possession again and anyone who had never watched Orient before would have thought we were coasting. Unfortunately whilst Spring had lead by example early in the game, we still lack the Stephen Dawson character in the team who would have rollicked anyone losing concentration with the victory still to be sealed. When Yeovil scraped one goal back it was inevitable that before the final whistle went there would be a crucial moment that would settle the game one way or another. The rest exists only in snapshots in my mind, like the memories of a nightmare. Russell Slade making a needless substitution to eat up some time. The team losing organisation as a result. Conceding a corner as two defenders got in each others way. Every single Orient player back in the penalty area to defend it, despite Yeovil still having players back. Yeovil having free possession when the corner was cleared because every Orient player was in the penalty area but then every one of them watching as the ball was played back in and turned in for the equaliser.
The performance should give Orient fans more hope than at any time in the last few weeks because the team finally showed some fight and got themselves into a winning position. But they are mentally fragile, too scared of defeat to confidently chase the win we need to confirm League One status. There is no doubt they care, as evidenced by the frenetic Russell Slade in the technical area and the reaction at the final whistle. I think I'd have been more upset with the team aimlessly wandering around clapping fans than by them storming off the field having thrown away their lifeline. I'd rather have a four point gap than be sitting in the bottom four right now but there is a high probability that if we continue to rely on others results, we'll stumble and fall inches short of the finishing line. In the last 9 seasons 2 teams have survived with 48 points, the other 7 all required at least 50. No one has survived with less than 48 points since Oxford United in 2000. Being relegated with 47 points this year may require an unlikely sequence of results but history suggests that stranger things have happened.
What appeared to be another negative Orient home team selection turned out to actually be quite positive - in a way. Although lining up with an apparent front pairing of Jamal Campbell-Ryce and Kevin Lisbie, the former either dropped deep or went wide looking for the ball. In effect Lisbie was still leading the line by himself but he was supported with Campbell-Ryce filling the gulf between him and the midfield and Matthew Spring getting forward as much as possible. Campbell-Ryce's role had the added bonus of also bringing Dean Cox into the game in the right positions as Cox overlapped with the Jamaican whenever he was on the ball. Sadly Orient's crossing wasn't all it could have been but when Cox did come up with the sort of delivery we expect it fell plum on Lisbie's head for the first goal.
There was so much more to the Orient performance than formations as they looked to fight their way out of danger. Matthew Spring deserves huge credit for the effort he put in and the team followed suit. Spring was provided cover for the back four when he was needed, played the simple short balls in the centre of the park when we needed a cool head and got up to support Lisbie when we attacked. It was a superb effort from the captain, leading by example when it was needed most. For the first time in months the rest of the team showed the same kind of energy and they deserved their half time lead. Despite Jamie Jones making two world class saves, Orient made most of the running and should have extended their lead before half time. Spirit and determination overcame the deficiencies that have plunged Orient into a relegation fight in a scrappy first half. It was obvious to everyone that we needed to continue playing at the same tempo in the second half if they were to enjoy similar success.
Of course we didn't and Yeovil looked surprised to be back in the game, spurning some early chances. From the start of the second half the signs were there that time wasting and slowing the game down wasn't the way to go. Orient ended up looking like England in an international tournament, abandoning the style of play that worked for them in favour of something that exposes their weaknesses. We started losing possession and making silly mistakes, seemingly losing their focus as soon as they took their foot off the pedal.
Ironically having weathered the early rally what should have been the high point of Orient's dismal season ended up being the worst thing that could have happened. When Lisbie applied the finish to the easiest goal he will ever score the relief around Brisbane Road was palpable. Wycome were losing, Orient were in front by two goals and Yeovil heads went down. What could go wrong now? Orient started enjoying some possession again and anyone who had never watched Orient before would have thought we were coasting. Unfortunately whilst Spring had lead by example early in the game, we still lack the Stephen Dawson character in the team who would have rollicked anyone losing concentration with the victory still to be sealed. When Yeovil scraped one goal back it was inevitable that before the final whistle went there would be a crucial moment that would settle the game one way or another. The rest exists only in snapshots in my mind, like the memories of a nightmare. Russell Slade making a needless substitution to eat up some time. The team losing organisation as a result. Conceding a corner as two defenders got in each others way. Every single Orient player back in the penalty area to defend it, despite Yeovil still having players back. Yeovil having free possession when the corner was cleared because every Orient player was in the penalty area but then every one of them watching as the ball was played back in and turned in for the equaliser.
The performance should give Orient fans more hope than at any time in the last few weeks because the team finally showed some fight and got themselves into a winning position. But they are mentally fragile, too scared of defeat to confidently chase the win we need to confirm League One status. There is no doubt they care, as evidenced by the frenetic Russell Slade in the technical area and the reaction at the final whistle. I think I'd have been more upset with the team aimlessly wandering around clapping fans than by them storming off the field having thrown away their lifeline. I'd rather have a four point gap than be sitting in the bottom four right now but there is a high probability that if we continue to rely on others results, we'll stumble and fall inches short of the finishing line. In the last 9 seasons 2 teams have survived with 48 points, the other 7 all required at least 50. No one has survived with less than 48 points since Oxford United in 2000. Being relegated with 47 points this year may require an unlikely sequence of results but history suggests that stranger things have happened.
Sunday 15 April 2012
Russell Slade : The man under the cap
There is a cycle of emotions around every Orient game at the moment. It starts at the final whistle of each game when a tsunami of vilification pours forth. Before the players have even reached the dressing room they've been torn apart in the stands and on the internet. It lasts for a few days. Any comment on manager Russell Slade tends to finish with "...and he can take his cap with him". Any player who comes out on twitter and offers apologies is quickly back in favour (apart from a few who think they should do their talking on the pitch). CEO Matt Porter typically recieves a whole heap of abuse for not giving up on the team - until he responds to comments, when he is then praised for staying positive and holding things together. This tends to be the turning point of the week and slowly the players are being exhorted to give it their all because the fans are behind them and generally people want Slade to stick his cap on his head again and not anywhere else. There is the rare added bonus of an ex-player sticking his oar in and getting in a tete-a-tete (sans chapeau) with a current player about who cares the most about the club. I didn't see who the winner was but I guess it wasn't anyone who in twenty years time will still be paying to watch the team play, whatever division they are in. Sadly at the moment the cycle is completed when the Os concede three goals again and lose and it starts all over again.
Some of this is entirely understandable and justified. No one at the club is pretending that recent results even come close to being acceptable. Generally during games fans have resisted getting on the players backs but players and management have accepted that, in the aftermath of games at least, it is hard to remain positive in the face of repeated disappointment. People need to get it out of their system before they are ready to look forward to the next game.
What surprises me though is the vitriol that directed at players and management who were loved so recently for bringing us our best finish in nigh on 20 years. There isn't a single fan who isn't considering how they feel about Russell Slade right now. We are in a tailspin and everyone is fighting hard and trying everything to pull us round, when what we need are cool calm heads. At this stage of the season there is no time to step back and take a deep breath, big games are coming once or twice a week. I am not in that place yet but if I felt Slade needed to go to give us a chance to stay up it would be with a heavy heart and extreme reluctance.
For others it seems a lot easier and as the red mist descends all of the good things that Slade has done are obscured. Some people seem to out and out hate him and would kick him without a thought. Others seem to take a perverse pleasure in our forutnes (so long as it doesn't actually get as far as being relegated) because it gives them licence to vent their frustrations. It's often said that football fans enjoy complaining as much as they do celebrating. I stopped going to every away game after the promotion season because at the very end of that season people were still complaining as if we were at the other end of the table. I thought that if you couldn't enjoy the run in at the end of that season then what was the point? Maybe it shouldn't be a surprise. As I write this on a Saturday evening, I'm certain that if I turned on any terrestial TV station right now there will be a talent show on and another group of twnetysomethings (lets call them Christians) are being torn apart by internet Lions. Pardon me a Victor Meldrew moment, but it is what seems to pass for entertainment these days and as the Christians/Lions comment suggests, it is primative. People feel better about themselves when they are tearing someone apart more than they do from anything constructive or good.
If you want you can disregard how much pleasure and pride Slade gave us last season as we beat Arsenal 1-1 and put together an unbeaten run not many amongst the 4,000 faithful had seen in their lifetime. My impression of Russell Slade, who I've only met once after the Arsenal game, is one of a thoroughly decent intelligent man who speaks quietly but with authority. He has made tough decisions but doesn't appear to be the sort of person who would take any sort of pleasure from seeing a family man. In return he is faced with hundreds who would gladly see him put out of his job without a second thought for the longer term future of of him or the club. It is the default position of football fans to call for the managers head at the earliest opportunity and the callousness of it is deeply unpleasant.
When I was younger I was untroubled by such thoughts. Peter Eustace was our manager and we had gone from play off contenders to lower mid-table also rans. A set of barking mad programme notes about wagon trains from the Yorkshireman was followed by his postmatch quote following a defeat at Brighton, that if Eustace was in the trenches he wouldn't want his players standing behind him. I wanted Eustace to be shown the door and as far as I was concerned his cloth cap would come in handy for begging because he wasn't fit for a job in football. A few weeks later I came across Eustace during half time of another game we were on our way to losing. I was seething at another poor performance and here was the clown responsible. He looked up, smiled and said "wrap up lads, it's getting colder out there". Suddenly the cartoon Eustace evaporated and I saw a human being who despite having the troubles of the world on his shoulders had time for a kind and friendly word for a horrible teenager. When he finally left the club I felt relief (for him as much as us) but took no pleasure in his departure.
I felt the same with someone much more popular with me if not others, Tommy Taylor. I liked Tommy a lot, as a man and a manager (if not as a man manager!). It wasn't a feeling shared by many fans, who were ready to call for his head after a single defeat let alone the kind of run we are on at the moment. People who complain that managers these days say nothing in interviews used to lambast Tommy for his frank and forthright style rather than welcome the fact he'd talk openly with anyone. Despite liking him a lot as a person I did wonder if it was time for him to step down after the Millennium Stadium play off defeat and my reservations were realised when he was sacked in the middle of a slump the following season. Of course resigning from Leyton Orient isn't the same as being sacked by Manchester City and so of course he didn't resign from employment even if he did feel that his best chance to get us promoted had gone. I do know that Tommy was an Orient man and he'd have loved getting us promoted as much as any fan. I also know that in the last months of his reign it wasn't unusual to see him sitting on the stairs in the club, wracked with back pain - caused I am certain as much by stress as by an actual physical ailment. Unseen by the fans was a man as vulnerable as any other, regardless of his bravado. Throughout his time at the club he was forced to put a brave face on the fact he was so unpopular but I am sure it ate him up inside. Yet it didn't stop him coming back to enjoy the success of two of his former players finally getting us out of League Two. I can't imagine many managers coming back to the club in such circumstances and it said a lot for both him and Martin Ling for inviting him.
Russell Slade the football manager has put together one Orient squad that came close to reaching the play offs, in a division filled with teams with greater financial resources than us. A victim of his own success he lost two of his best players. Without them Dean Cox has been expected to work miracles by himself. On top of that the young goalkeeper who was also linked with move stayed but then has been out injured all season. Some of the players he has brought in haven't worked out, others aren't anywhere near as bad as they have been made out to be. If we can scrape ourselves out of this mess then he has as much chance as anyone else of putting together another squad that can fight its way up the table. He has done it once before after all. It is a much bigger gamble to go out and get yet another manager. Successful people learn from their mistakes and I'd much rather see him do that here than anywhere else, whilst a new manager joins us and starts from square one. Changing our line up game by game has got us into this mess. In the long term changing managers frequently will have the same sort of effect.
If Slade does go it'll be off the back of a set of results that are difficult to argue with because only a spell of good form mid-season has stopped this being a catastrophic season. But whatever happens to Slade the manager, Slade the man has been treated shabbily. Football is more than a sport to many of us and yet we treat the human beings involved in it as if it was just one big game.
Some of this is entirely understandable and justified. No one at the club is pretending that recent results even come close to being acceptable. Generally during games fans have resisted getting on the players backs but players and management have accepted that, in the aftermath of games at least, it is hard to remain positive in the face of repeated disappointment. People need to get it out of their system before they are ready to look forward to the next game.
What surprises me though is the vitriol that directed at players and management who were loved so recently for bringing us our best finish in nigh on 20 years. There isn't a single fan who isn't considering how they feel about Russell Slade right now. We are in a tailspin and everyone is fighting hard and trying everything to pull us round, when what we need are cool calm heads. At this stage of the season there is no time to step back and take a deep breath, big games are coming once or twice a week. I am not in that place yet but if I felt Slade needed to go to give us a chance to stay up it would be with a heavy heart and extreme reluctance.
For others it seems a lot easier and as the red mist descends all of the good things that Slade has done are obscured. Some people seem to out and out hate him and would kick him without a thought. Others seem to take a perverse pleasure in our forutnes (so long as it doesn't actually get as far as being relegated) because it gives them licence to vent their frustrations. It's often said that football fans enjoy complaining as much as they do celebrating. I stopped going to every away game after the promotion season because at the very end of that season people were still complaining as if we were at the other end of the table. I thought that if you couldn't enjoy the run in at the end of that season then what was the point? Maybe it shouldn't be a surprise. As I write this on a Saturday evening, I'm certain that if I turned on any terrestial TV station right now there will be a talent show on and another group of twnetysomethings (lets call them Christians) are being torn apart by internet Lions. Pardon me a Victor Meldrew moment, but it is what seems to pass for entertainment these days and as the Christians/Lions comment suggests, it is primative. People feel better about themselves when they are tearing someone apart more than they do from anything constructive or good.
If you want you can disregard how much pleasure and pride Slade gave us last season as we beat Arsenal 1-1 and put together an unbeaten run not many amongst the 4,000 faithful had seen in their lifetime. My impression of Russell Slade, who I've only met once after the Arsenal game, is one of a thoroughly decent intelligent man who speaks quietly but with authority. He has made tough decisions but doesn't appear to be the sort of person who would take any sort of pleasure from seeing a family man. In return he is faced with hundreds who would gladly see him put out of his job without a second thought for the longer term future of of him or the club. It is the default position of football fans to call for the managers head at the earliest opportunity and the callousness of it is deeply unpleasant.
When I was younger I was untroubled by such thoughts. Peter Eustace was our manager and we had gone from play off contenders to lower mid-table also rans. A set of barking mad programme notes about wagon trains from the Yorkshireman was followed by his postmatch quote following a defeat at Brighton, that if Eustace was in the trenches he wouldn't want his players standing behind him. I wanted Eustace to be shown the door and as far as I was concerned his cloth cap would come in handy for begging because he wasn't fit for a job in football. A few weeks later I came across Eustace during half time of another game we were on our way to losing. I was seething at another poor performance and here was the clown responsible. He looked up, smiled and said "wrap up lads, it's getting colder out there". Suddenly the cartoon Eustace evaporated and I saw a human being who despite having the troubles of the world on his shoulders had time for a kind and friendly word for a horrible teenager. When he finally left the club I felt relief (for him as much as us) but took no pleasure in his departure.
I felt the same with someone much more popular with me if not others, Tommy Taylor. I liked Tommy a lot, as a man and a manager (if not as a man manager!). It wasn't a feeling shared by many fans, who were ready to call for his head after a single defeat let alone the kind of run we are on at the moment. People who complain that managers these days say nothing in interviews used to lambast Tommy for his frank and forthright style rather than welcome the fact he'd talk openly with anyone. Despite liking him a lot as a person I did wonder if it was time for him to step down after the Millennium Stadium play off defeat and my reservations were realised when he was sacked in the middle of a slump the following season. Of course resigning from Leyton Orient isn't the same as being sacked by Manchester City and so of course he didn't resign from employment even if he did feel that his best chance to get us promoted had gone. I do know that Tommy was an Orient man and he'd have loved getting us promoted as much as any fan. I also know that in the last months of his reign it wasn't unusual to see him sitting on the stairs in the club, wracked with back pain - caused I am certain as much by stress as by an actual physical ailment. Unseen by the fans was a man as vulnerable as any other, regardless of his bravado. Throughout his time at the club he was forced to put a brave face on the fact he was so unpopular but I am sure it ate him up inside. Yet it didn't stop him coming back to enjoy the success of two of his former players finally getting us out of League Two. I can't imagine many managers coming back to the club in such circumstances and it said a lot for both him and Martin Ling for inviting him.
Russell Slade the football manager has put together one Orient squad that came close to reaching the play offs, in a division filled with teams with greater financial resources than us. A victim of his own success he lost two of his best players. Without them Dean Cox has been expected to work miracles by himself. On top of that the young goalkeeper who was also linked with move stayed but then has been out injured all season. Some of the players he has brought in haven't worked out, others aren't anywhere near as bad as they have been made out to be. If we can scrape ourselves out of this mess then he has as much chance as anyone else of putting together another squad that can fight its way up the table. He has done it once before after all. It is a much bigger gamble to go out and get yet another manager. Successful people learn from their mistakes and I'd much rather see him do that here than anywhere else, whilst a new manager joins us and starts from square one. Changing our line up game by game has got us into this mess. In the long term changing managers frequently will have the same sort of effect.
If Slade does go it'll be off the back of a set of results that are difficult to argue with because only a spell of good form mid-season has stopped this being a catastrophic season. But whatever happens to Slade the manager, Slade the man has been treated shabbily. Football is more than a sport to many of us and yet we treat the human beings involved in it as if it was just one big game.
Sunday 8 April 2012
If....Orient are staying up
If the season was to end tomorrow not many Orient fans would be too sorry. Its the time of the season when teams with something to play for start looking at their opponents' remaining fixtures and current form, trying to work out how many points they are going to need and where they will come from. In the hope of not having to spend the next few weeks fretting about Orient's upcoming games I have done exactly that. And it's GOOD NEWS as I predict that despite a nervous month for Orient, Oldham and Bury fans the final table will look much like it does now. If...
As things currently stand every team from 16th place Preston downwards are currently embroiled in the relegation battle. I am sure that Preston and Oldham would like to think they are safe as they are currently 6 points clear of danger and need 4 points from 5 games in order to be safe. However, Preston have only managed 1 win in their last 12 games and would be sliding down the slippery slope even quicker if not for their ability to regularly hold teams to draws. Similarly Oldham have managed 2 wins and 8 defeats over their last ten games as they've edged closer and closer to the relegation zone. The two teams face each other in a huge game on 21 April, the winner of which will probably be safe before the end of the month. I suspect it'll be Preston, who have struggled so much due to playing teams at the top and they have been able to win against the lower sides. That will throw Oldham into a the fight and they'll be forced to battle right up to the end of the season. I think they will struggle in their next three against Sheffield Wednesday, Wycombe and Preston, before picking up the points they need against Bury and Carlisle.
Obviously the other team completely out of sorts are Orient. I am sure there is a Wycombe fan somewhere sitting looking at our record and thinking that we pick up the odd away win and should be able to do so against either Exeter or Hartlepool. It is a different kettle of fish when you've been following our fortunes week in and out and are now wondering where our next win will come from. We're always pessimistic about our own team but trying to be rational about it I don't expect us to lose every game any more than I expect Charlton and Sheffield United to breeze through and win all of theirs. I still think we'll be stumbling right through to the end though. Despite the improved performance against Notts County it is hard to see us getting anything at home, which makes the away games against Exeter and Hartlepool crucial. I fancy the Exeter game to be a stalemate because both sides have been unable to find the net and the Grecians will put up one last fight even though they are all but relegated. The vital points will come against Hartlepool who have had a rotten time since having little to play for in mid-table obscurity. Anything against Sheffield United would be a bonus and Yeovil are capable of winning away and will capitalise on our home woes. I would expect Orient to reach the last day of the season on 50 points - in theory enough but still too close to comfort. A final home draw against Rochdale (who like Exeter seem beyond help now) should be enough with Wycombe suffering from having the most difficult of run ins.
Wycombe are the team I expect to move the most as they face two games against struggling teams before playing stronger teams in their final three games. On Monday they face Chesterfield, practically relegated already and on a roll of three straight defeats since their Wembley appearance in the JPT Final. A win will enable Wycombe to cruise up to the Os, before going past us with a home win against Oldham. From there I think it gets just a bit too hard from them. They face trips to Charlton and Sheffield Wednesday, the latter winning regularly at home, the former stuttering but managing to beat teams in the bottom half of the table. That leaves a home fixture against Notts County who we have seen get results despite not looking very good away from home. Wycombe may get a point against the Magpies but it won't be enough and their fate will be sealed at Hillsborough on the last day.
That is if Bury pick up the four points they need to scramble to safety. Bury have had a difficult time on their travels of late and will be grateful that they are the only side in the relegation battle with 3 home games in their last 5. They should get the points they need from their next two home games, against Colchester (who have been drawing a lot of away games but losing to teams who still have something to play for) and against Bournemouth who are in freefall and losing for fun on their travels. They also face Stevenage on the last day of the season, another draw specialist team, who will probably have their eyes on the holiday's more than most after a tumultuous season.
It will be interesting to see what happens with Dean Smith at Walsall this summer, especially if the Orient board take a long hard look at Russell Slade's position, regardless of where we end up. For two seasons now he has shown he can motivate teams at the sharp end of the season to fight their way out of trouble. The WalsallWalsall are on a terrific run, beating the teams they need to (and even taking 4 points from the Sheffield clubs), regularly winning at home and drawing away. On Friday they showed the sort of determination we'd expect from a team managed by our old skipper, coming from behind to beat Chesterfield. On paper they have a difficult run in, that includes Charlton, Huddersfield and MK Dons. However, they've shown enough lately to make you believe that they can pick up a point at the Valley and follow it up with a win against struggling Tranmere next Saturday. Draws away at Exeter and Huddersfield, who have drawn most of their recent away games, will see them effectively safe before the last day. Even if they're not MK Dons have struggled to win at home and I wouldn't put it past the Saddlers to get the result they need to if it comes to it.
Unfortunately (in the circumstances) football isn't as predictable as we'd like i to be but it does show just how little we need to do to secure our safety. The opportunities are there for the Os and if we can't take the points we need from the games we have with the players we have at our disposal then sadly we don't deserve to stay up. Come on you Os!
Projected final table
16. Walsall 55
17. Preston 54
18. Oldham 52
19. Bury 51
20. Leyton Orient 51
--------------------------
21. Wycombe 49
22. Rochdale 41
23. Exeter 39
24. Chesterfield 36
As things currently stand every team from 16th place Preston downwards are currently embroiled in the relegation battle. I am sure that Preston and Oldham would like to think they are safe as they are currently 6 points clear of danger and need 4 points from 5 games in order to be safe. However, Preston have only managed 1 win in their last 12 games and would be sliding down the slippery slope even quicker if not for their ability to regularly hold teams to draws. Similarly Oldham have managed 2 wins and 8 defeats over their last ten games as they've edged closer and closer to the relegation zone. The two teams face each other in a huge game on 21 April, the winner of which will probably be safe before the end of the month. I suspect it'll be Preston, who have struggled so much due to playing teams at the top and they have been able to win against the lower sides. That will throw Oldham into a the fight and they'll be forced to battle right up to the end of the season. I think they will struggle in their next three against Sheffield Wednesday, Wycombe and Preston, before picking up the points they need against Bury and Carlisle.
Obviously the other team completely out of sorts are Orient. I am sure there is a Wycombe fan somewhere sitting looking at our record and thinking that we pick up the odd away win and should be able to do so against either Exeter or Hartlepool. It is a different kettle of fish when you've been following our fortunes week in and out and are now wondering where our next win will come from. We're always pessimistic about our own team but trying to be rational about it I don't expect us to lose every game any more than I expect Charlton and Sheffield United to breeze through and win all of theirs. I still think we'll be stumbling right through to the end though. Despite the improved performance against Notts County it is hard to see us getting anything at home, which makes the away games against Exeter and Hartlepool crucial. I fancy the Exeter game to be a stalemate because both sides have been unable to find the net and the Grecians will put up one last fight even though they are all but relegated. The vital points will come against Hartlepool who have had a rotten time since having little to play for in mid-table obscurity. Anything against Sheffield United would be a bonus and Yeovil are capable of winning away and will capitalise on our home woes. I would expect Orient to reach the last day of the season on 50 points - in theory enough but still too close to comfort. A final home draw against Rochdale (who like Exeter seem beyond help now) should be enough with Wycombe suffering from having the most difficult of run ins.
Wycombe are the team I expect to move the most as they face two games against struggling teams before playing stronger teams in their final three games. On Monday they face Chesterfield, practically relegated already and on a roll of three straight defeats since their Wembley appearance in the JPT Final. A win will enable Wycombe to cruise up to the Os, before going past us with a home win against Oldham. From there I think it gets just a bit too hard from them. They face trips to Charlton and Sheffield Wednesday, the latter winning regularly at home, the former stuttering but managing to beat teams in the bottom half of the table. That leaves a home fixture against Notts County who we have seen get results despite not looking very good away from home. Wycombe may get a point against the Magpies but it won't be enough and their fate will be sealed at Hillsborough on the last day.
That is if Bury pick up the four points they need to scramble to safety. Bury have had a difficult time on their travels of late and will be grateful that they are the only side in the relegation battle with 3 home games in their last 5. They should get the points they need from their next two home games, against Colchester (who have been drawing a lot of away games but losing to teams who still have something to play for) and against Bournemouth who are in freefall and losing for fun on their travels. They also face Stevenage on the last day of the season, another draw specialist team, who will probably have their eyes on the holiday's more than most after a tumultuous season.
It will be interesting to see what happens with Dean Smith at Walsall this summer, especially if the Orient board take a long hard look at Russell Slade's position, regardless of where we end up. For two seasons now he has shown he can motivate teams at the sharp end of the season to fight their way out of trouble. The WalsallWalsall are on a terrific run, beating the teams they need to (and even taking 4 points from the Sheffield clubs), regularly winning at home and drawing away. On Friday they showed the sort of determination we'd expect from a team managed by our old skipper, coming from behind to beat Chesterfield. On paper they have a difficult run in, that includes Charlton, Huddersfield and MK Dons. However, they've shown enough lately to make you believe that they can pick up a point at the Valley and follow it up with a win against struggling Tranmere next Saturday. Draws away at Exeter and Huddersfield, who have drawn most of their recent away games, will see them effectively safe before the last day. Even if they're not MK Dons have struggled to win at home and I wouldn't put it past the Saddlers to get the result they need to if it comes to it.
Unfortunately (in the circumstances) football isn't as predictable as we'd like i to be but it does show just how little we need to do to secure our safety. The opportunities are there for the Os and if we can't take the points we need from the games we have with the players we have at our disposal then sadly we don't deserve to stay up. Come on you Os!
Projected final table
16. Walsall 55
17. Preston 54
18. Oldham 52
19. Bury 51
20. Leyton Orient 51
--------------------------
21. Wycombe 49
22. Rochdale 41
23. Exeter 39
24. Chesterfield 36
Sunday 1 April 2012
Why Russell Slade's got no hair
The past week has shown why football managers all end up grey, bald, crazy or bitter (or a combination of all of the above). If there is one particular rod that has been used to beat Russell Slade with this season it is George Porter. Fans want to see exciting players and there is nothing more exciting than someone who can run and beat players at pace. When it results in chances being created and goals being scored it is enough for fans and they want to see their name on the teamsheet each week. After a decent run in the team at the start of the season many have been dismayed that since November Porter's appearances became as rare as Jonathan Tehoue visiting the salad bar (welcome back Jon, we love you really) .
That was until Tuesday night at Oldham, when the latest new Orient line up featured Porter from the start. By all accounts he had an excellent game, culminating in being the provider of the winning goal and a precious three points in the battle to stay out of the relegation fight. Of course this was all the evidence that was required to prove that Russell has been wrong to leave him out all season. This is the way fans always think, they'd never countenance the idea that players having to bide their time, be patient and prove they are a team player contributes to the way they perform when they do get in the team.
In handling young, precocious talents managers face an almost impossible task, safe in the knowledge that 99% of the time they'll be proved wrong in hindsight. If the player does well the manager was too cautious, if he fails to develop it is because he was held back. I prefer to think that the young players who never really made it at Orient but have gone on to do well at a higher level have done so because of the road they travelled. They might never have become the players they have without being spurred on by disappointments early in their career. Maybe if we indulge Porter and act like he is already the bees knees he'll be a Jabo Ibehre and bounce around the benches of League One teams. If things are a bit harder for him and he has the maturity to learn some hard lessons early on he might go on to a higher standard, without having to rebuild his career at a lower level. Slade's handling of him could mean that Orient is the springboard for that career, rather than a Conference team.
Yesterday was a tough afternoon for the kid and despite working hard he didn't see enough of the ball. Unfortunately he showed one flash on inexperience when a quickly taken free kick caught Porter napping and even with his electric pace he was unable to chase back and Charlton almost literally walked the ball into the back of the net. To his credit he didn't seek to blame anyone else, he just turned and walked head up ready for the re-start, simply hoping to make up for his mistake rather than deflect blame. Another lesson learned and an error I'd bet he won't repeat for a while. It did remind me of a couple of things told to me by Paul Clark, Tommy Taylor's assistant, that showed how being an armchair manager is easy but the real thing is just a series of headaches.
The first was the simple stat that in one season Orient had conceded nine goals from set pieces as a result of Jabo losing his man. You can bet your life that everyone will remember a run that he made or spectacular goal he scored in that season but will be oblivious to the fact that his net value to the team was negative. The other was a story about Iyseden Christie, a player I loved for his unpredictability at one end because defences didn't know how to handle him. It was less of an asset at the other. In one game as he prepared to come on as substitute Clark sat with him and went through who he was to mark at set pieces. As he stood on the touchline they did it again and as he ran on they stood and pointed where he was to go as the Os prepared to defend a corner. The corner was taken and the opposition scored as a result of Iyseden not picking up his marker!
Only the manager and coaches would even be aware of that because they see the whole picture and try to balance their teams as a result. Slade still doesn't seem to be able to get that balance right with the players currently at his disposal and we look ineffective going forward. That doesn't mean that there is a simple answer in the shape of George Porter. We've been hammered enough times this year to see that getting it wrong defensively can have disastrous consequences but somehow Slade has to find a way to set a time up that isn't vulnerable at the back but is capable of threatening at the other end.
That was until Tuesday night at Oldham, when the latest new Orient line up featured Porter from the start. By all accounts he had an excellent game, culminating in being the provider of the winning goal and a precious three points in the battle to stay out of the relegation fight. Of course this was all the evidence that was required to prove that Russell has been wrong to leave him out all season. This is the way fans always think, they'd never countenance the idea that players having to bide their time, be patient and prove they are a team player contributes to the way they perform when they do get in the team.
In handling young, precocious talents managers face an almost impossible task, safe in the knowledge that 99% of the time they'll be proved wrong in hindsight. If the player does well the manager was too cautious, if he fails to develop it is because he was held back. I prefer to think that the young players who never really made it at Orient but have gone on to do well at a higher level have done so because of the road they travelled. They might never have become the players they have without being spurred on by disappointments early in their career. Maybe if we indulge Porter and act like he is already the bees knees he'll be a Jabo Ibehre and bounce around the benches of League One teams. If things are a bit harder for him and he has the maturity to learn some hard lessons early on he might go on to a higher standard, without having to rebuild his career at a lower level. Slade's handling of him could mean that Orient is the springboard for that career, rather than a Conference team.
Yesterday was a tough afternoon for the kid and despite working hard he didn't see enough of the ball. Unfortunately he showed one flash on inexperience when a quickly taken free kick caught Porter napping and even with his electric pace he was unable to chase back and Charlton almost literally walked the ball into the back of the net. To his credit he didn't seek to blame anyone else, he just turned and walked head up ready for the re-start, simply hoping to make up for his mistake rather than deflect blame. Another lesson learned and an error I'd bet he won't repeat for a while. It did remind me of a couple of things told to me by Paul Clark, Tommy Taylor's assistant, that showed how being an armchair manager is easy but the real thing is just a series of headaches.
The first was the simple stat that in one season Orient had conceded nine goals from set pieces as a result of Jabo losing his man. You can bet your life that everyone will remember a run that he made or spectacular goal he scored in that season but will be oblivious to the fact that his net value to the team was negative. The other was a story about Iyseden Christie, a player I loved for his unpredictability at one end because defences didn't know how to handle him. It was less of an asset at the other. In one game as he prepared to come on as substitute Clark sat with him and went through who he was to mark at set pieces. As he stood on the touchline they did it again and as he ran on they stood and pointed where he was to go as the Os prepared to defend a corner. The corner was taken and the opposition scored as a result of Iyseden not picking up his marker!
Only the manager and coaches would even be aware of that because they see the whole picture and try to balance their teams as a result. Slade still doesn't seem to be able to get that balance right with the players currently at his disposal and we look ineffective going forward. That doesn't mean that there is a simple answer in the shape of George Porter. We've been hammered enough times this year to see that getting it wrong defensively can have disastrous consequences but somehow Slade has to find a way to set a time up that isn't vulnerable at the back but is capable of threatening at the other end.
Sunday 25 March 2012
More cool heads, less squeaky bums
On the one hand a narrow 0-1 defeat to Sheffield Wednesday flattered Orient yesterday and yet on the other Wednesday probably didn't deserve much more than their solitary goal. In the grand scheme of things it is probably fair to say that, neither set of fans left the ground particularly satisfied albeit the visitors had the comfort of three points in the bag. Only those in the dressing room really know whether the manager has sent out a negative team or whether the players haven't carried out his instructions but yesterday's post-match comments indicate that Russell Slade sent the team out with very modest ambitions. It seems that Slade hoped to keep it at 0-0 or even 0-1 for as long as possible and hope that we would be able to do a smash and grab at the other end.
After leaking bucketfuls of goals in recent games Slade's caution is understandable but there are ways to improve your resiliency without reducing your attacking options to practically nothing. Orient defended heroically but had to do so because the tactics invited Wednesday to attack at will in the belief that that we could absorb the pressure heaped upon us. With the only 'out ball' being a long punt up to Lisbie who had four towering defenders around him at all times, the Os had little hope of retaining possession and creating anything themselves. It has been rare for Orient to have as many attacking players in the team as they did yesterday and yet the likes of Cox, Campbell-Ryce and Jimmy Smith were barely able (or allowed) to get out of their own half, their defensive duties paramount.
None of which says very much for Sheffield Wednesday, who will be happy with the win but not the performance and a better team might have hammered us. Wednesday were everything you'd expect of a team constructed by Gary Megson - almost to a man, tall, strong and quick and Orient were simply unable to compete with them physically. Skipper Rob Jones gave the most dominating defensive display I've seen at Brisbane Road since Brian Kilcline visited with Darlington at the end of his career. At times it seemed that he was the only person to touch the ball in the Wednesday half. But for all that they created very few clear cut chances. You can defend with as many players as you like but everyone to work hard and stick to their tasks, which every single one of the Orient players did. Cuthbert and Chorley were immense and whilst his pace was exposed on a couple of occasions, Terrell Forbes stuck to it and almost completely nullified the threat of Michail Antonio. Paul Rachubka was rarely fully extended and most of the saves he made were comfortable, although he made them look anything but with a few more spills that put hearts in mouths. Unfortunately his best save, from a point blank header by Reda Johnson resulted in the same player turning in the rebound for the only goal.
This final stretch at the end of a disappointing season is going to require more cool heads and fewer squeaky bums. The Os have an unenviable run in and still have to face 3 of the current top 6 over the next 6 games, with Notts County thrown in for good measure. From the outside a degree of desperation seems to have crept into the decision making of the management. The last two games have seen highly questionable substitutions, with Campbell-Ryce and George Porter employed as centre-forwards - whilst centre forward David Mooney played in Campbell-Ryce's position on the wing at MK Dons! Even less understandably all of the tactical changes yesterday seemed designed to allow Jimmy Smith to stay on the pitch, despite him having little impact on the game. I think Smith attracts a lot of unfair stick but it wasn't his day and the team set up wasn't suited to his game. Aside from the goalkeeping problem I think we have a squad that shouldn't be getting dragged into a relegation battle, although the sooner that Ryan Dickson is fit again the better. But we've seen the team shuffled game after game, as if at this crucial stage of the season Slade is still trying to find out what his best team is. This isn't pre-season and we haven't got the time to find our best eleven. With the late introduction of a number of loanees to cover for injuries, suspensions and departures I think Slade has been drawn into constant firefighting and the bigger picture has become obscured. He and the players need to regroup and focus on what is going to be required to get the points required to stay out of trouble, plus a few more for the sake of comfort.
The same applies to fans. After the game a large minority ran out of patience with Slade and decide that for them, it was time for a change. Slade was appointed manager at a similar stage of the season in 2010 and some believe that is required again if the Os are to scrape out of trouble. For one thing I can't see see him leaving unless Orient's freefalling form completely nose dives. With the games that are coming up it is entirely possible for that to happen. It might be difficult but the fans may have to swallow a couple more days like yesterday and avoid pouring oil on the fire. The games against Yeovil and especially Rochdale and Exeter
After leaking bucketfuls of goals in recent games Slade's caution is understandable but there are ways to improve your resiliency without reducing your attacking options to practically nothing. Orient defended heroically but had to do so because the tactics invited Wednesday to attack at will in the belief that that we could absorb the pressure heaped upon us. With the only 'out ball' being a long punt up to Lisbie who had four towering defenders around him at all times, the Os had little hope of retaining possession and creating anything themselves. It has been rare for Orient to have as many attacking players in the team as they did yesterday and yet the likes of Cox, Campbell-Ryce and Jimmy Smith were barely able (or allowed) to get out of their own half, their defensive duties paramount.
None of which says very much for Sheffield Wednesday, who will be happy with the win but not the performance and a better team might have hammered us. Wednesday were everything you'd expect of a team constructed by Gary Megson - almost to a man, tall, strong and quick and Orient were simply unable to compete with them physically. Skipper Rob Jones gave the most dominating defensive display I've seen at Brisbane Road since Brian Kilcline visited with Darlington at the end of his career. At times it seemed that he was the only person to touch the ball in the Wednesday half. But for all that they created very few clear cut chances. You can defend with as many players as you like but everyone to work hard and stick to their tasks, which every single one of the Orient players did. Cuthbert and Chorley were immense and whilst his pace was exposed on a couple of occasions, Terrell Forbes stuck to it and almost completely nullified the threat of Michail Antonio. Paul Rachubka was rarely fully extended and most of the saves he made were comfortable, although he made them look anything but with a few more spills that put hearts in mouths. Unfortunately his best save, from a point blank header by Reda Johnson resulted in the same player turning in the rebound for the only goal.
This final stretch at the end of a disappointing season is going to require more cool heads and fewer squeaky bums. The Os have an unenviable run in and still have to face 3 of the current top 6 over the next 6 games, with Notts County thrown in for good measure. From the outside a degree of desperation seems to have crept into the decision making of the management. The last two games have seen highly questionable substitutions, with Campbell-Ryce and George Porter employed as centre-forwards - whilst centre forward David Mooney played in Campbell-Ryce's position on the wing at MK Dons! Even less understandably all of the tactical changes yesterday seemed designed to allow Jimmy Smith to stay on the pitch, despite him having little impact on the game. I think Smith attracts a lot of unfair stick but it wasn't his day and the team set up wasn't suited to his game. Aside from the goalkeeping problem I think we have a squad that shouldn't be getting dragged into a relegation battle, although the sooner that Ryan Dickson is fit again the better. But we've seen the team shuffled game after game, as if at this crucial stage of the season Slade is still trying to find out what his best team is. This isn't pre-season and we haven't got the time to find our best eleven. With the late introduction of a number of loanees to cover for injuries, suspensions and departures I think Slade has been drawn into constant firefighting and the bigger picture has become obscured. He and the players need to regroup and focus on what is going to be required to get the points required to stay out of trouble, plus a few more for the sake of comfort.
The same applies to fans. After the game a large minority ran out of patience with Slade and decide that for them, it was time for a change. Slade was appointed manager at a similar stage of the season in 2010 and some believe that is required again if the Os are to scrape out of trouble. For one thing I can't see see him leaving unless Orient's freefalling form completely nose dives. With the games that are coming up it is entirely possible for that to happen. It might be difficult but the fans may have to swallow a couple more days like yesterday and avoid pouring oil on the fire. The games against Yeovil and especially Rochdale and Exeter
Sunday 18 March 2012
The old Orient and the new Tommy Carroll emerge
It didn't really matter how Orient played yesterday, we were just desperate for a win, the first in over a month and the first at home in 2012. A good performance but no three points wasn't enough after our recent run and we badly needed a victory before playing each of the top six in the next 8 games. Exceeding a lot of expectations Orient managed both, a deserved win resulting from a confident performance.
For the first time in weeks (or even months) the Os provided a constant attacking threat, with the midfield and attack looking as balanced as it has been in any game this season. Spurred by some fine individual performances Orient scored two home goals for only the third time in 19 league games at Brisbane Road this season. Kevin Lisbie played as the sole striker instead of Calvin Andrew and rewarded Russell Slade's faith by scoring only his second home goal from open play for Orient. He was supported by a fluid attacking midfield line up, with Dean Cox and Jamal Campbell-Ryce lining up on the left and right wings respectively but with the pair often swapping over or supporting each other on the same side. Brentford's defence and midfield were unable to pick up the runners coming from different places and when they did manage to, it left space for Jimmy Smith coming from behind them.
Jimmy Smith benefitted most from the confusion it caused and thought he had scored early on when he turned in the rebound when Dean Cox's shot hit the post, only to be flagged offside. He got his goal just before half time, the Brentford defence standing and watching as Cox's cross was laid off by Chorley for Smith to pass into the net with ease. For the first time this term the Os looked something like the side from last season, with Matt Spring and Adam Reed (the new Tommy Carroll) pulling the strings behind the attacking midfielders and orchestrating the attacks with their pinpoint passing. Orient not only found out how to win again but how to do it with a little bit of style.
Before the game there were particular concerns about the defence and mainly the keeper. Those fears were almost realised when Paul Rachubka dropped a simple catch but Saido Berahino missed the open goal presented to him. A few minutes later Rachubka made a comfortable save down to his left, eliciting sarcastic cheers from both Brentford and Orient supporters and all the ingredients were there for a nervy afternoon for both keeper and fans. But Rachubka went on to make a smart save from Niall McGinn and despite a preference for punching rather than catching he looked confident in everything he did after that. After weathering something of a rally from the Bees at the start of the second half Orient looked totally in control, the ability to keep possession the perfect recipe for holding onto a rare two goal lead without inviting pressure.
The defence bears watching though. There was a lack of understanding between keeper and defence yesterday and it needs addressing. In the first half Leon McSweeney made a clearance from under Rachubka's nose and when the keeper claimed he called for it he was ignored, Ben Chorley slapping McSweeney on the back. No problem with a defender taking responsibility and clearing the ball but the lack of acknowledgement for the keeper was concerning. Just before half time Chorley conceded a corner kick from right over by the corner flag and yet turned around and strangely berated Rachubka for not coming out for the ball. Even at the end of the game Chorley and Rachubka were in animated discussion.
Matt Spring is the temporary custodian of the captains armband and Russell Slade will decide in the summer whether he or someone else gets it permanently. He could do worse than Scott Cuthbert. Recognising the division in the ranks Cuthbert attepted to pull things back together, making a point of shaking hands with both Chorley and Rachubka at half time and full time to recognise a job well done by the team, in which they had all played a part. A player with that sort of attitude could go a long way to filling the void that Stephen Dawson's departure has left behind.
For the first time in weeks (or even months) the Os provided a constant attacking threat, with the midfield and attack looking as balanced as it has been in any game this season. Spurred by some fine individual performances Orient scored two home goals for only the third time in 19 league games at Brisbane Road this season. Kevin Lisbie played as the sole striker instead of Calvin Andrew and rewarded Russell Slade's faith by scoring only his second home goal from open play for Orient. He was supported by a fluid attacking midfield line up, with Dean Cox and Jamal Campbell-Ryce lining up on the left and right wings respectively but with the pair often swapping over or supporting each other on the same side. Brentford's defence and midfield were unable to pick up the runners coming from different places and when they did manage to, it left space for Jimmy Smith coming from behind them.
Jimmy Smith benefitted most from the confusion it caused and thought he had scored early on when he turned in the rebound when Dean Cox's shot hit the post, only to be flagged offside. He got his goal just before half time, the Brentford defence standing and watching as Cox's cross was laid off by Chorley for Smith to pass into the net with ease. For the first time this term the Os looked something like the side from last season, with Matt Spring and Adam Reed (the new Tommy Carroll) pulling the strings behind the attacking midfielders and orchestrating the attacks with their pinpoint passing. Orient not only found out how to win again but how to do it with a little bit of style.
Before the game there were particular concerns about the defence and mainly the keeper. Those fears were almost realised when Paul Rachubka dropped a simple catch but Saido Berahino missed the open goal presented to him. A few minutes later Rachubka made a comfortable save down to his left, eliciting sarcastic cheers from both Brentford and Orient supporters and all the ingredients were there for a nervy afternoon for both keeper and fans. But Rachubka went on to make a smart save from Niall McGinn and despite a preference for punching rather than catching he looked confident in everything he did after that. After weathering something of a rally from the Bees at the start of the second half Orient looked totally in control, the ability to keep possession the perfect recipe for holding onto a rare two goal lead without inviting pressure.
The defence bears watching though. There was a lack of understanding between keeper and defence yesterday and it needs addressing. In the first half Leon McSweeney made a clearance from under Rachubka's nose and when the keeper claimed he called for it he was ignored, Ben Chorley slapping McSweeney on the back. No problem with a defender taking responsibility and clearing the ball but the lack of acknowledgement for the keeper was concerning. Just before half time Chorley conceded a corner kick from right over by the corner flag and yet turned around and strangely berated Rachubka for not coming out for the ball. Even at the end of the game Chorley and Rachubka were in animated discussion.
Matt Spring is the temporary custodian of the captains armband and Russell Slade will decide in the summer whether he or someone else gets it permanently. He could do worse than Scott Cuthbert. Recognising the division in the ranks Cuthbert attepted to pull things back together, making a point of shaking hands with both Chorley and Rachubka at half time and full time to recognise a job well done by the team, in which they had all played a part. A player with that sort of attitude could go a long way to filling the void that Stephen Dawson's departure has left behind.
Sunday 11 March 2012
Tehoue : Cult Hero
Football fans love a stat and as with all statistics they can use them to prove what they already think. We've learned this week that Jonathan Tehoue was a great asset to Orient because his goals to starting appearance ratio was so good. Conversely he was ultimately a disappointment because the majority of those goals came from the bench and he rarely scored when he started a game.
Some players achieve something so momentous in a single game or even in a single moment that not only are they remembered because of it, everything they do subsequently is viewed through the prism of that moment. I thought that daring to say I didn't think Jonathan Tehoue leaving the club was that big of a disappointment earlier this week would be met with howls of derision. However, since he left he has been critical of his time at Orient and it has been enough for quite a few people to remove their Arsenal tinted spectacles - particularly his comment that he would like to come back to Brisbane Road with Swindon and score a goal against his old club. As panic sets in this week, some fans wouldn't mind just still being in League One so that it is a possibility.
It was appropriate that Tehoue's most famous moment in an Os shirt came as a substitute, a role he was more than familiar with in his time at the club. You can't argue that Tehoue was a player who could come on and make a real impact on a game and he turned around matches that seemed beyond redemption on a number of occasions. But the romantic notion of the super sub masked the fact that over a long period of time he was unable or unwilling to get himself properly fit. There were times at the end of last season when he was downright embarrassing, wheezing in the centre circle, unable to join an attack just 15 minutes after coming on as sub. Russell Slade's problem became that Tehoue 'could' come on and change a game but he could equally come on and look entirely disinterested in anything happening more than 5 yards away from him. It becomes a dilemma for a manager - better the devil you know or look for someone you hope is more consistent and reliable.
The rumour going around for a year or so now is that Tehoue was the highest paid player in the club, picking up three grand a week for these 20 minute cameos. That shows a massive underestimation of Barry Hearn and would be contrary to every other dealing he has had at the club since becoming Chairman. It is entirely possible that Tehoue receives that sort of money if he starts a game, scores, Orient win and are in a play-off position and he turns up for training on time all week. But it defies logic that Hearn would agree to pay a man with a long history of injuries and a string of ex-clubs, one of whom he was in dispute with shortly before joining the Os. It would be a gamble completely out of character for the club and thankfully so.
After leaving for Swindon people have speculated that he must have fallen out with Russell Slade and was quickly on his way. But I felt he was on his way out as soon as he made a number of starting appearances for Orient, starting with the away win at Bournemouth, his first league start this season. Whenever this happens people immediately assume that a player is being given a chance having been on the far fringes of the squad for as long as anyone can remember. More often than not they are actually being put in the shop window - their time is up, they aren't in the manager's long term plans and if they can be removed from the pay bill the sooner the better and no one is going to be interested in a reserve team player. Isn't it amazing, as soon as someone is playing for a move away from the club they are suddenly able to look interested for 90 minutes and play consecutive games? I don't think being subbed at half time against Walsall in what was potentially his last game for the club had as much to do with Tehoue's departure as much as Slade's need to free up space in the squad for much needed fresh blood. It has been a surprise though that he has so far chosen to bring in three midfielders to replace him. Slade's plans will become apparent over the next few games but he is currently hamstrung by accumulating injuries and suspensions.
Russell Slade appears to have a very clear idea of the mix of characters he thinks he needs at the club and isn't shy of moving people on if they don't live up to his expectations. Tehoue had more time than most and he may complain now that Slade never rated him but he had longer than some to convince the manager that he really wanted to be part of what he is trying to do at the club. The manager who is able to get 100% from Jonathan Tehoue is going get a great return from the striker. He is an unstoppable cannon ball who terrifies defences when he is in the mood, you just need to know how to light his fuse. You can almost guarantee there will be fireworks at Swindon, Paulo Di Canio will either fire up Tehoue and he'll be the player we wanted him to be or it'll be a partnership that backfires spectacularly.
But Tehoue will rightly always be a cult hero to Os fans. However high his wages he re-paid it and more by earning a replay at the Emirates (not to mention we were only still in the competition thanks to his last minute equaliser against Droylsden). For all of the frustrations there is that unrivalled moment of sheer joy as he crashed his shot past Manuel Almunia. I just watched it again and it still brings a tear to the eye. For the Brisbane Road faithful Jonathan Tehoue will always be a riddle, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in an Os shirt.
Some players achieve something so momentous in a single game or even in a single moment that not only are they remembered because of it, everything they do subsequently is viewed through the prism of that moment. I thought that daring to say I didn't think Jonathan Tehoue leaving the club was that big of a disappointment earlier this week would be met with howls of derision. However, since he left he has been critical of his time at Orient and it has been enough for quite a few people to remove their Arsenal tinted spectacles - particularly his comment that he would like to come back to Brisbane Road with Swindon and score a goal against his old club. As panic sets in this week, some fans wouldn't mind just still being in League One so that it is a possibility.
It was appropriate that Tehoue's most famous moment in an Os shirt came as a substitute, a role he was more than familiar with in his time at the club. You can't argue that Tehoue was a player who could come on and make a real impact on a game and he turned around matches that seemed beyond redemption on a number of occasions. But the romantic notion of the super sub masked the fact that over a long period of time he was unable or unwilling to get himself properly fit. There were times at the end of last season when he was downright embarrassing, wheezing in the centre circle, unable to join an attack just 15 minutes after coming on as sub. Russell Slade's problem became that Tehoue 'could' come on and change a game but he could equally come on and look entirely disinterested in anything happening more than 5 yards away from him. It becomes a dilemma for a manager - better the devil you know or look for someone you hope is more consistent and reliable.
The rumour going around for a year or so now is that Tehoue was the highest paid player in the club, picking up three grand a week for these 20 minute cameos. That shows a massive underestimation of Barry Hearn and would be contrary to every other dealing he has had at the club since becoming Chairman. It is entirely possible that Tehoue receives that sort of money if he starts a game, scores, Orient win and are in a play-off position and he turns up for training on time all week. But it defies logic that Hearn would agree to pay a man with a long history of injuries and a string of ex-clubs, one of whom he was in dispute with shortly before joining the Os. It would be a gamble completely out of character for the club and thankfully so.
After leaving for Swindon people have speculated that he must have fallen out with Russell Slade and was quickly on his way. But I felt he was on his way out as soon as he made a number of starting appearances for Orient, starting with the away win at Bournemouth, his first league start this season. Whenever this happens people immediately assume that a player is being given a chance having been on the far fringes of the squad for as long as anyone can remember. More often than not they are actually being put in the shop window - their time is up, they aren't in the manager's long term plans and if they can be removed from the pay bill the sooner the better and no one is going to be interested in a reserve team player. Isn't it amazing, as soon as someone is playing for a move away from the club they are suddenly able to look interested for 90 minutes and play consecutive games? I don't think being subbed at half time against Walsall in what was potentially his last game for the club had as much to do with Tehoue's departure as much as Slade's need to free up space in the squad for much needed fresh blood. It has been a surprise though that he has so far chosen to bring in three midfielders to replace him. Slade's plans will become apparent over the next few games but he is currently hamstrung by accumulating injuries and suspensions.
Russell Slade appears to have a very clear idea of the mix of characters he thinks he needs at the club and isn't shy of moving people on if they don't live up to his expectations. Tehoue had more time than most and he may complain now that Slade never rated him but he had longer than some to convince the manager that he really wanted to be part of what he is trying to do at the club. The manager who is able to get 100% from Jonathan Tehoue is going get a great return from the striker. He is an unstoppable cannon ball who terrifies defences when he is in the mood, you just need to know how to light his fuse. You can almost guarantee there will be fireworks at Swindon, Paulo Di Canio will either fire up Tehoue and he'll be the player we wanted him to be or it'll be a partnership that backfires spectacularly.
But Tehoue will rightly always be a cult hero to Os fans. However high his wages he re-paid it and more by earning a replay at the Emirates (not to mention we were only still in the competition thanks to his last minute equaliser against Droylsden). For all of the frustrations there is that unrivalled moment of sheer joy as he crashed his shot past Manuel Almunia. I just watched it again and it still brings a tear to the eye. For the Brisbane Road faithful Jonathan Tehoue will always be a riddle, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in an Os shirt.
Sunday 4 March 2012
The Referee's a Banker (no, really he is)
I know there are some close contenders but has there even been a referee more determined to make sure he gets noticed than Andy D'Urso? The Essex banker has made a virtue of incompetence to such a degree that he is one of the most familiar names on the referees list, solely due to the regularity with which he shows his ineptitude. Contrary to what some might think after yesterday, the man is not a cheat and the Os have previously benefited from his inability to engage his brain and apply common sense. Two years ago he insisted our game with Gillingham kick off at 7:45, despite a monster traffic jam around the Blackwall Tunnel which prevented half of Gillingham's team, fans and kit from reaching the ground on time. Unsurprisingly the players that did make it were disorganised and unfocused and Orient raced into a two goal lead that could easily have been more.
Yesterday's team sheets brought unwelcome news that the intended referee Pat Miller was no longer officiating and had been replaced by the nearest available ref - one Andy D'Urso. And true to form D'Urso made sure everyone knew he was there, handling the game with typical fussiness and inflexibility. Five bookings may not seem a lot but the game was so uncompetitive I'd be surprised if any other referee could have given five fouls in the entire match. That was the least of our problems as the stunned mullet of refereeing took little more than half an hour to change the face of the game.
Walsall skipper Andy Butler clashed in the air with Jonathan Tehoue, the Frenchman left rubbing his head on the floor. None of the Os players reacted particularly but D'Urso booked Butler. He may have been the only person in the ground to think that Butler challenged Tehoue recklessly with his forearm, but having done so he decided to show only a yellow card for it. That was just two minutes before his major cock up. At first sight it appeared that Taiwo stretched for a tackle but won the ball cleanly, one footed, from the side and on the ground. Replays show that more or less to be true, although in slow motion in looks as though he clipped the ball rather than making a proper connection but that he still reached it before Cuvelier. At worst it was mistimed and a yellow card and D'Urso's decision to show a straight red was inexplicable.
But that is the problem with D'Urso, his ability to use his own judgement is non-existent. He saw a tackle, the conclusion of which looked like something he'd seen people sent off for on TV recently and decided he was obliged to show the red card. Russell Slade has already said that Orient will appeal the decision but that would seem to be a futile act. The FA never overturn a decision based on a referee's judgement and like Charlie Daniels and Matt Spring before him he is unlikely to have his ban overturned. Only the fact that it is D'Urso may play in our favour as he is one of the few referees I can recall to be demoted from the Premiership for his incompetence.
The game itself would have been a non-event were it not for the refereeing controversy. You have to worry for Dean Smith and Walsall. They turned in a performance as poor as I've seen at Brisbane Road for a long time. It is hard to believe that a team led by Dean Smith could look so unmotivated and completely lacking any kind of cohesion. In truth it was like watching a school side playing - a school side where half of the team had been forced to play. The Saddlers players looked completely disinterested, rarely chasing or tackling and giving the ball away with alarming regularity. In particular Jon Macken is an embarrassment and how the hardworking Ryan Jarvis can't get in the team as Macken plods around contributing nothing to the team is beyond me.
Unfortunately Orient weren't much better and despite being a man down should have put the game beyond doubt. Lisbie failed to take a one-on-one chance to score his first home goal in 6 games and Jimmy Smith failed to score in injury time, the otherwise erratic Grof denying him with a good save. Sub debutant Calvin Andrew looked useful and took the paint off of one of the posts as a half chance whistled wide. But even without a second goal the Os should have been able to contain such a poor side quite easily. Instead they took their foot off of the pedal and allowed silly mistakes to creep into their game. On loan keeper Marek Stech is definitely a cause for concern. He rarely looked comfortable and on three ocassions in the second half he came and either got nowhere near a cross or barely made a connection with a punch. The fourth time he flapped, missed and Oliver Lancashire headed into the empty goal with the keeper blaming his team mates for failing to rescue him from his own mistake. Butcher's replacement looks like a decent shot stopper but a liability from crosses.
There is still a 7 point cushion between Orient and the relegation zone but that gap will start getting uncomfortably small if, as it now appears, the Os have developed a fully fledged complex about playing at home. As ever, In Slade We Trust and all eyes will be the teamsheet on Tuesday night to see how he will address the absence of Taiwo and maybe Dickson. If Leon McSweeney isn't on it the quiet muttered questions about his unexplained absence will start to get very loud.
Yesterday's team sheets brought unwelcome news that the intended referee Pat Miller was no longer officiating and had been replaced by the nearest available ref - one Andy D'Urso. And true to form D'Urso made sure everyone knew he was there, handling the game with typical fussiness and inflexibility. Five bookings may not seem a lot but the game was so uncompetitive I'd be surprised if any other referee could have given five fouls in the entire match. That was the least of our problems as the stunned mullet of refereeing took little more than half an hour to change the face of the game.
Walsall skipper Andy Butler clashed in the air with Jonathan Tehoue, the Frenchman left rubbing his head on the floor. None of the Os players reacted particularly but D'Urso booked Butler. He may have been the only person in the ground to think that Butler challenged Tehoue recklessly with his forearm, but having done so he decided to show only a yellow card for it. That was just two minutes before his major cock up. At first sight it appeared that Taiwo stretched for a tackle but won the ball cleanly, one footed, from the side and on the ground. Replays show that more or less to be true, although in slow motion in looks as though he clipped the ball rather than making a proper connection but that he still reached it before Cuvelier. At worst it was mistimed and a yellow card and D'Urso's decision to show a straight red was inexplicable.
But that is the problem with D'Urso, his ability to use his own judgement is non-existent. He saw a tackle, the conclusion of which looked like something he'd seen people sent off for on TV recently and decided he was obliged to show the red card. Russell Slade has already said that Orient will appeal the decision but that would seem to be a futile act. The FA never overturn a decision based on a referee's judgement and like Charlie Daniels and Matt Spring before him he is unlikely to have his ban overturned. Only the fact that it is D'Urso may play in our favour as he is one of the few referees I can recall to be demoted from the Premiership for his incompetence.
The game itself would have been a non-event were it not for the refereeing controversy. You have to worry for Dean Smith and Walsall. They turned in a performance as poor as I've seen at Brisbane Road for a long time. It is hard to believe that a team led by Dean Smith could look so unmotivated and completely lacking any kind of cohesion. In truth it was like watching a school side playing - a school side where half of the team had been forced to play. The Saddlers players looked completely disinterested, rarely chasing or tackling and giving the ball away with alarming regularity. In particular Jon Macken is an embarrassment and how the hardworking Ryan Jarvis can't get in the team as Macken plods around contributing nothing to the team is beyond me.
Unfortunately Orient weren't much better and despite being a man down should have put the game beyond doubt. Lisbie failed to take a one-on-one chance to score his first home goal in 6 games and Jimmy Smith failed to score in injury time, the otherwise erratic Grof denying him with a good save. Sub debutant Calvin Andrew looked useful and took the paint off of one of the posts as a half chance whistled wide. But even without a second goal the Os should have been able to contain such a poor side quite easily. Instead they took their foot off of the pedal and allowed silly mistakes to creep into their game. On loan keeper Marek Stech is definitely a cause for concern. He rarely looked comfortable and on three ocassions in the second half he came and either got nowhere near a cross or barely made a connection with a punch. The fourth time he flapped, missed and Oliver Lancashire headed into the empty goal with the keeper blaming his team mates for failing to rescue him from his own mistake. Butcher's replacement looks like a decent shot stopper but a liability from crosses.
There is still a 7 point cushion between Orient and the relegation zone but that gap will start getting uncomfortably small if, as it now appears, the Os have developed a fully fledged complex about playing at home. As ever, In Slade We Trust and all eyes will be the teamsheet on Tuesday night to see how he will address the absence of Taiwo and maybe Dickson. If Leon McSweeney isn't on it the quiet muttered questions about his unexplained absence will start to get very loud.
Monday 27 February 2012
Football v Homophobia
Talking of pride at Orient....
As football tries to restore its reputation in the aftermath of the Luis Suarez affair, The Justin Campaign has been attempting to highlight another prejudice in football. Its annual Football v Homophobia week has probably attracted more attention than ever before this year, in no small part thanks to the Suarez incident and the media's sudden appetite for snaring footballers guilty of any kind of prejudice. And it is an issue that is linked to Orient in conflicting ways.
The Justin Campaign is of course named after the one openly gay footballer in the English game, Justin Fashanu. When Fashanu signed for Leyton Orient and I met him in the Brisbane Road gym / press room, it was the first time I had knowingly met a gay man and I only knew that because it was made such a big deal of. Shortly afterwards I was also introduced to homophobia for the first time. I was 14 and knew what homosexuality was but I hadn't thought about it very much and didn't think that anyone did either. But when Fashanu was at the club it seemed to be all some people could think about. It started with little jokes, not even jokes really, just sniggers and knowing nods at the mention of his name. However, it went on to 'serious' conjecture about him unsettling the dressing room. I couldn't figure out why until it was explained just how risky it was letting a gay man anywhere near other men in a changing room, or even worse, in the showers. And it wasn't just that he wouldn't be able to control himself but that he'd also risk spreading AIDS. This was explained to me by fans in all seriousness, without malice, just incredible ignorance.
If anyone wants to believe that racism in football has waned since the 80s but homophobia hasn't changed at all should look at attitudes around our club now. Lee Steele is an Orient legend - you can count the number of strikers who have fired the Os to promotion on one hand. Yet when Steelo was sacked by Oxford City for a homophobic tweet about Gareth Thomas, the general feeling amongst Orient fans who expressed their opinions on the message board and on Twitter was one of disappointment in their hero. There was debate about whether the punishment was excessive and whether it would be the same if he played for a professional team. But few sought to defend his comments or his right to make them, which is quite a statement considering that people are often blinded when it comes to their heroes. Society has changed and the attitudes of a lot of football fans have changed with it, hero or not.
No one has followed Justin Fashanu out of the closet in this country and the experiences of one straight player widely assumed to be gay go a long way to explaining why. Graeme Le Saux faced vitriolic abuse for rumours started in the Chelsea dressing room about his sexuality, based on the fact he read the Guardian rather than The Sun and spent his holiday travelling Europe with Ken Monkou and Erland Johnson rather than Shaggaluf with 'the lads'. Was this just dressing room banter that he was expected to join in with to be accepted as some people think? Le Saux has named Paul Ince as someone who would taunt him and claim afterwards it meant nothing and was simply aimed at putting an opponent off his game, which was, in his view, fair enough. But when Le Saux did the same and insulted 'the Guvnor's' wife Ince confronted Le Saux after the game and had to be pulled away. Just two years ago gave an interview saying he still wanted to "knock [Le Saux] out". Apparently there is a line in the sand, which includes race and family (and I daresay someone questioning one’s own sexuality) but doesn't include homosexuality. Le Saux spent his whole career on the receiving end of torrents of often vitriolic abuse. If that is the experience of someone who wasn’t even gay it is frightening to think what it would be like for someone who was.
Surveys and censuses have suggested that anything between 5% and 15% of the UK population are gay. So the theory goes, that must mean that ratio is replicated amongst footballers. This ignores the fact that Asians make up 4% of the UK population and to my knowledge there have been one or two Asian footballers in the English leagues in recent years? It is entirely believable that no sane gay man would seek a football career when faced with having to hide who he was if he was to be at all successful. Are we happy at the thought that young kids feel they have to walk away from a sport they love because at the same time that they are beginning to show promise they are also beginning to understand their sexuality? Even if that doesn't bother you morally, has it failed to escape anyone’s notice that there isn't enough talent in our national game to be able to afford to simply write off circa 10% of the male population of the country?
Inside the dressing room players are always going to find something to take the mickey out of, be it their team mates' dress sense, taste in music or hairstyle. Twitter users this week discovered that Alex Revell remains endlessly amused about the size of Lee Butcher's nipples! Since Russell Slade became our manager we've seen what can be done with a squad that is engendered with team spirit and a desire to play for each other. Time is spent at all clubs on team building exercises that ensure that everyone buys into the team ethic, ensuring that the dressing room is lively AND inclusive. A player or group of players who create discord or cliques in a dressing room are a manager's worst nightmare. Anyone who is made to feel like a stranger or an outsider isn't going to have the desire to fight with his team 'mates' in the face of adversity.
Experience has shown that what starts as a bit of banter about someone’s sexuality, leads to singling out of players for continual abuse, from opponents and fans, every single week. When a joke that is meant to be harmless is exactly the same type of joke that someone uses to attack and persecute someone, it takes on far greater significance and meaning and it stops being funny at all. There isn't a club in the country that would dare not be a part of the Kick Racism Out Of Football campaign and as the Football v Homophobia campaign gathers momentum it will hopefully attract the same attention*. It needs to because nasty, tribal abuse (which the media like to mask as ‘passion’) lacking any wit or imagination is still too prevalent inside football grounds. Too often it includes homophobic language. It would be nice to think that eventually a gay footballer could be entirely open about his life without fear of attracting abuse but won't have to come out publically because it is so unremarkable that it has become a non-issue.
Link:
www.thejustincampaign.com/
*The media made much of the fact that The Justin Campaign wrote to all professional clubs asking them to do something to mark Football v Homophobia week and only a few clubs responded. I don’t think it is correct to make a sweeping generalisation without knowing more about who they wrote to, when and what they asked clubs to do. I e-mailed the Justin Campaign but unfortunately they were unable to respond before I wrote this. As more clubs became aware of the campaign this week they did respond positively by agreeing to wear t-shirts during their warm ups and so on.
Tuesday 21 February 2012
The Orient Family
People often talk about fans being the lifeblood of football clubs. Usually this is in terms of numbers - big clubs fallen on hard times are still big clubs because thousands still support them. Big Premiership clubs who fail to make an impact in the Champions League are still considered global powers because of the amount of shirts they sell in the Far East and beyond. Premiership also rans are respected because their home grounds are still filled with fans who sing for 90 minutes and make them difficult places for the Top 4 to visit. The identity of clubs is based on such superficial things.
When people talk about football and the community at lower league clubs they are referring to outreach schemes, clubs running training sessions for kids and visiting hospitals and schools. A number of clubs make an impact in their wider communities, the majority of whom will probably never be regular attendees at games. But no one ever talks about the community that is the club itself on a Saturday afternoon. On the surface a few thousand strangers attend games each week, spending a couple of hours together in the cold before going back to their lives. But the shared experience of suffering disappointment together, of winning against the expectations of everyone else, of supporting a team that half of your friends haven't heard of and the other half think are a waste of time binds strangers together. For two hours you are among people who are a little bit like you, who understand why you are there, why it means so much and why being there isn't a decision, it is just who you are and what you do.
Leyton Orient pulls people together and those people define what the club stands for more than any player, official or reporter. The club's ethics are determined by the collective will of the majority of the club's fans, sometimes in association with the club and sometimes independent of it. We want to be proud of our club and so we demand that on and off the pitch the club reflects our values. In that way the club represents us.
Orient's history isn't just about the lack of trophies we've won, the play off finals we've lost and glorious failures that Manchester United fans could only dream of. It is about people who have grown up at Brisbane Road, attending their first games as kids, loving Orient being the one trait they are willing to be proud to admit to having inherited from their parents. We meet friends here, from people we are on no more than nodding terms with to those who end up being god parents to kids who are signed up to the Junior Os / Theo's Gang within days of their birth.
Orient's history isn't just about the lack of trophies we've won, the play off finals we've lost and glorious failures that Manchester United fans could only dream of. It is about people who have grown up at Brisbane Road, attending their first games as kids, loving Orient being the one trait they are willing to be proud to admit to having inherited from their parents. We meet friends here, from people we are on no more than nodding terms with to those who end up being god parents to kids who are signed up to the Junior Os / Theo's Gang within days of their birth.
The fabric of the club is the stories we tell about our times spent at Orient and about the characters we have encountered, about people who were once young fans even though we've never seen them with a hair on their head and about people no longer with us. Players, officials and fans are immortalised here and are never forgotten because people remember and talk about them. In recent years we've seen Remembrance Day services for ex-players Richard McFadden, William Jonas and George Scott and steward Robert Foster. Pages in the programme have been filled with tributes to people who were as much a part of the match day experience as hearing someone say 'typical Orient' at the first misplaced pass. And fans have paid their own tributes to friends they have lost like Dale Jacobs with fund raising events to help keep their memory alive. Hopefully rarely these people are our close friends or even family but often we won't have known most of these people personally. Occasionally we'd know them a little, we'd say hello each time we saw them but couldn't say we truly knew them. But there is a common bond that makes us feel like we did know them because they are all a little bit like us - they loved Orient, they'd heard all the same jokes we had, the stories we hear about them are 'typically Orient' and they'd been part of a communal celebration on rare nights of success. We feel a loss because wish we'd met them and known them better because we are sure we'd have liked them. It makes us feel a little prouder to be an Orient fan and a little more determined to carry it on.
A particular branch of the Orient community resides on Twitter. It is a network of people we've known for years, people we'd lost touch with and people we'd never come across before. Every opinion on Orient and every expression of joy or disappointment is shared with the rest of the community in a short message. A number of us have met each other as a result of twitter, watched games together or stopped and chatted outside the ground. Others haven't but chat regularly in 140 characters or less. Each weekend and on the occasional Tuesday evening we bombard each other with opinions about the team. The rest of the time we all get to know a little about each other, as football gives way to the rest of our day to day existence.
Last week a family's loss of a young daughter was also felt by a small community of people who also felt like they knew her well. One can only imagine what Martin and Ross Kerwood and their family are going through as they come to terms with losing their daughter/sister Jenny so suddenly and right now they are in the thoughts of every Orient fan who knows them. Everyone who came to know @jennyk5 through twitter was stunned when they read the awful news on Friday and through the evening and weekend a large number of fans chose Twitter to express their feelings about someone who was a big part of the Orient twitter community.
Everyone who had spoken to Jenny found her to be extremely bright, passionate about the Os and she always had something insightful to say about the team. Though she loved Orient just as much as her family she obviously loved football generally and when she wasn't talking about Orient (or Eastenders) she was talking about heading out to play football on a Sunday morning, regardless of the weather. I gather from the odd thing she said here and there that she also wanted to be a sports journalist. She came across as someone with boundless enthusiasm, determination and ambition and yet was still a kind and considerate person who left plenty of room in her life for other people, especially her family and friends. Her family have said how proud they were of Jenny and it is clear from all of the messages I have seen we were just as proud that she was a part of the Orient community and she always will be.
Saturday 18 February 2012
Don't Wanna Be Home
As Orient succumbed to their eighth home league defeat of the season a number of fans will have looked in the back of their programmes to count up the 9 away games we have left, compared to just 7 home fixtures. After a 3-1 home defeat eerily reminiscent of the surrender to Oldham in September everyone is left to wonder exactly why Orient seem unable to perform at home, grateful that we have enough away games to avoid slipping down the table. Considering some of the performances that have been dished up, fans have been remarkably loyal and haven't been on the players' backs. You don't sense edginess and doubt amongst fans either because quite often we are going into games off the back of decent away wins. Not enough for soaring expectations, just a positive feeling around the place. And yet on too many occasions the team has come out completely flat.
Today started no differently but Scunthorpe were almost a mirror image of the Os and slowly but surely the home team took control of the game. However, despite dominating possession Orient failed to create very much with it, largely because they couldn't get the ball to Dean Cox. Getting frustrated Cox resorted to coming infield searching for the ball but when he got it he was in no possession to use it. When he laid it off to someone else they would look for Cox on the left flank - and of course he wasn't there.
Scunthorpe were combative and were tasked to compete for every ball and whilst they won the physical battles they were unable to retain possession having done so. This lead to the breakthrough, a succession of challenges drawing Cox's markers towards the ball and leaving him one on one with the full back. Channelling his frustration and determined to make the most of having the ball at his feet on the wing Cox charged inside and put a cross straight onto the head of Jonathan Tehoue to open the scoring. The goal led to the Os enjoying even more possession but still the chances didn't come. Still there was every reason to be confident because as lacklustre as Orient were, Scunthorpe had failed to respond to going a goal down and showed no sign of doing so.
That all changed in the second half as Scunthorpe came out looking like they had Orient just where they wanted them, with the home side reduced to little more than observers. The pressure they were able to exert led to Josh Walker volleying an equaliser past a statuesque defence and Russell Slade tried to spark some life into the team by replacing Taiwo with George Porter. It had little effect on Orient's ability to attack with any purpose but the Os looked even more vulnerable defending without Taiwo harassing Scunthorpe's midfield. Sure enough 5 minutes from the end ex-O Andy Barcham poked home a winner. To rub salt in the wound Jon Parkin scored a third, Lee Butcher seriously injuring himself in the process. Having juggled a cross Butcher appeared to land awkwardly and sustained a knee injury, spilling the ball straight to Parkin. Time will tell how bad it is but it is unfortunate for Butcher who had been getting better all of the time. It was a fitting end to a miserable afternoon.
There were some bright points - Ryan Dickson was the most willing to meet the physical challenge, Soloman Taiwo was energetic and wanted the ball all over the pitch and Scott Cuthbert showed that not all Scottish goalkeepers are suspect. But Russell Slade has to find a way to bring the team out of their shells at home because we are being contained too easily by visiting sides and it has cost us the opportunity to mount a play off challenge.
Today started no differently but Scunthorpe were almost a mirror image of the Os and slowly but surely the home team took control of the game. However, despite dominating possession Orient failed to create very much with it, largely because they couldn't get the ball to Dean Cox. Getting frustrated Cox resorted to coming infield searching for the ball but when he got it he was in no possession to use it. When he laid it off to someone else they would look for Cox on the left flank - and of course he wasn't there.
Scunthorpe were combative and were tasked to compete for every ball and whilst they won the physical battles they were unable to retain possession having done so. This lead to the breakthrough, a succession of challenges drawing Cox's markers towards the ball and leaving him one on one with the full back. Channelling his frustration and determined to make the most of having the ball at his feet on the wing Cox charged inside and put a cross straight onto the head of Jonathan Tehoue to open the scoring. The goal led to the Os enjoying even more possession but still the chances didn't come. Still there was every reason to be confident because as lacklustre as Orient were, Scunthorpe had failed to respond to going a goal down and showed no sign of doing so.
That all changed in the second half as Scunthorpe came out looking like they had Orient just where they wanted them, with the home side reduced to little more than observers. The pressure they were able to exert led to Josh Walker volleying an equaliser past a statuesque defence and Russell Slade tried to spark some life into the team by replacing Taiwo with George Porter. It had little effect on Orient's ability to attack with any purpose but the Os looked even more vulnerable defending without Taiwo harassing Scunthorpe's midfield. Sure enough 5 minutes from the end ex-O Andy Barcham poked home a winner. To rub salt in the wound Jon Parkin scored a third, Lee Butcher seriously injuring himself in the process. Having juggled a cross Butcher appeared to land awkwardly and sustained a knee injury, spilling the ball straight to Parkin. Time will tell how bad it is but it is unfortunate for Butcher who had been getting better all of the time. It was a fitting end to a miserable afternoon.
There were some bright points - Ryan Dickson was the most willing to meet the physical challenge, Soloman Taiwo was energetic and wanted the ball all over the pitch and Scott Cuthbert showed that not all Scottish goalkeepers are suspect. But Russell Slade has to find a way to bring the team out of their shells at home because we are being contained too easily by visiting sides and it has cost us the opportunity to mount a play off challenge.
Sunday 12 February 2012
Loan Window
As the saying goes, when God closes a window he opens another window. The loan window is less sexy than January's transfer window. You don't get groups of scallies trying to get on Sky Sports News at the news that Plymouth are signing Ipswich's third choice right back on a months contract. But for clubs like Orient it is the loan market that can make or break their season because mid season 'free transfers' like Dean Leacock don't come along every day. Nor do statements from Barry Hearn like 'we're prepared to pay whatever it takes to get into the play offs', which I think is actually a goodthing. Watching the way Bournemouth are throwing money around for players they could get for free within months, with no guarantee of success in the short period that the benefactor is in love with his new plaything makes me fear for their future.
Russell Slade has already moved early to fill the two most obvious holes in the squad. Ryan Dickson comes in from Southampton to take the left back position, already successfully inhabited by Charlie Daniels, Tony Craig and Adam Chicksen this season. Soloman Taiwo is a supposed replacement for Stephen Dawson. If he was that good then Barnsley would have signed Taiwo on loan and picked up Dawson for free at the end of the season. I look forward to seeing what he offers us but we probably need to temper our expectations a little.
So what other signings does Russ need to make if we are to finish the season strongly? Lee Cook is the one player we have been linked with and it is an exciting thought. But it is hard to see where he would fit into the team. Cox has to be our first choice winger. Cook is the better player (which isn't a slight on Cox at all) but there is no point displacing the best player we have and upsetting him in the process. The Chesterfield game showed that Cox isn't effective when he plays off the wing and from watching Cook I'm not sure he'd be any better if they swapped the positions they took up in that game. Cook's game was all about beating a player, creating half a yard for a cross, I can't seem him playing up front and running into the channels.
The wage money could be better spent on a right back and a striker. The right back position has been even more of a revolving door than left back this season. Recently Terrell Forbes has been doing a decent job there but I've never been comfortable relying on a centre back out of position for too long - teams suss them out pretty quickly. With no right winger we need someone who can get up and down that flank to balance the midfield and support the strikers and although he did well against 10-man Charlton Forbes really isn't that player. Leon McSweeney has done nothing wrong in that position either and would be my first choice of the current options. But with the loss of Dawson I would rather use him in midfield, which is after all his natural position.
Spring has been outstanding in the last two months and Jimmy Smith's ability to score goals from midfield is hugely undervalued. That leaves someone to do the dirty work. Laird is still struggling to find some consistency and Taiwo is, as yet, an unknown quantity. I would prefer the option of playing McSweeney there because he has proved all season that he is willing to role up his sleeves and get stuck in.
First choice strikers Lisbie and Mooney have been satisfactory this season but both would probably agree there has also been room for improvement. They couldn't ask for more than having Dean Cox creating chances for them and both have been guilty of squandering opportunities. Like Smith, I think Mooney gets a bit of a raw deal from supporters but if he had reached double figures by now we might be higher up the table. There seems to be no downside in bringing in someone capable of hitting the target who is currently wasting his abilities in the reserve team of a Premiership or even Championship club. It'll give him first team experience and we might just pick up a gem for three months and if it doesn't work out Lisbie and Mooney are doing enough to prevent us getting into serious trouble, scoring goals here and there. Harry Kane made a useful contribution last year, we just struggled when forced to rely on him because of injuries and fatigue.
Beyond that there isn't a lot wrong with the squad and we can have one eye on the summer when we can make longer term improvements. Injuries may mean we need to bring in short term cover but such is our lot, we can't afford to be paying the wages of a player who ends up sitting on the bench for the whole season. We've lost a lot of players over the last 12 months for a variety of reasons. The fact that Slade has continued to field a team that can compete in a league that has a number of teams in it that have resources we can only dream of deserves some recognition.
Russell Slade has already moved early to fill the two most obvious holes in the squad. Ryan Dickson comes in from Southampton to take the left back position, already successfully inhabited by Charlie Daniels, Tony Craig and Adam Chicksen this season. Soloman Taiwo is a supposed replacement for Stephen Dawson. If he was that good then Barnsley would have signed Taiwo on loan and picked up Dawson for free at the end of the season. I look forward to seeing what he offers us but we probably need to temper our expectations a little.
So what other signings does Russ need to make if we are to finish the season strongly? Lee Cook is the one player we have been linked with and it is an exciting thought. But it is hard to see where he would fit into the team. Cox has to be our first choice winger. Cook is the better player (which isn't a slight on Cox at all) but there is no point displacing the best player we have and upsetting him in the process. The Chesterfield game showed that Cox isn't effective when he plays off the wing and from watching Cook I'm not sure he'd be any better if they swapped the positions they took up in that game. Cook's game was all about beating a player, creating half a yard for a cross, I can't seem him playing up front and running into the channels.
The wage money could be better spent on a right back and a striker. The right back position has been even more of a revolving door than left back this season. Recently Terrell Forbes has been doing a decent job there but I've never been comfortable relying on a centre back out of position for too long - teams suss them out pretty quickly. With no right winger we need someone who can get up and down that flank to balance the midfield and support the strikers and although he did well against 10-man Charlton Forbes really isn't that player. Leon McSweeney has done nothing wrong in that position either and would be my first choice of the current options. But with the loss of Dawson I would rather use him in midfield, which is after all his natural position.
Spring has been outstanding in the last two months and Jimmy Smith's ability to score goals from midfield is hugely undervalued. That leaves someone to do the dirty work. Laird is still struggling to find some consistency and Taiwo is, as yet, an unknown quantity. I would prefer the option of playing McSweeney there because he has proved all season that he is willing to role up his sleeves and get stuck in.
First choice strikers Lisbie and Mooney have been satisfactory this season but both would probably agree there has also been room for improvement. They couldn't ask for more than having Dean Cox creating chances for them and both have been guilty of squandering opportunities. Like Smith, I think Mooney gets a bit of a raw deal from supporters but if he had reached double figures by now we might be higher up the table. There seems to be no downside in bringing in someone capable of hitting the target who is currently wasting his abilities in the reserve team of a Premiership or even Championship club. It'll give him first team experience and we might just pick up a gem for three months and if it doesn't work out Lisbie and Mooney are doing enough to prevent us getting into serious trouble, scoring goals here and there. Harry Kane made a useful contribution last year, we just struggled when forced to rely on him because of injuries and fatigue.
Beyond that there isn't a lot wrong with the squad and we can have one eye on the summer when we can make longer term improvements. Injuries may mean we need to bring in short term cover but such is our lot, we can't afford to be paying the wages of a player who ends up sitting on the bench for the whole season. We've lost a lot of players over the last 12 months for a variety of reasons. The fact that Slade has continued to field a team that can compete in a league that has a number of teams in it that have resources we can only dream of deserves some recognition.
Sunday 5 February 2012
January Review
Orient's form in January was more up and down than Stevenage/Preston's 'passing' game. A real hotchpot of results saw the Os finish 9th in the form table for the month - a position no one should realistically be too upset about finishing in at the end of the season. To finish any higher we have to be capable of teams not manager by Graham Westley - although given his start as Preston manager and the unveiling of star signing Aaron Brown , one of our genuine rejects, he could be looking for his third job in 2012 before the season is out.
Perceptions are interesting because fans were most disappointed with the home draw against Chesterfield, who have actually had something of a revival this month. That draw was off the back of a celebrated win away at Preston - who have been terrible. With hindsight he most disappointing result has to be the home defeat to Colchester, who looked ordinary and their form in January has suggested as much. What we've really learned is that, not for the first time, the Os are stronger away from home. Sure, get too close to Scotland and we get stuffed but 2 away wins out of 3 isn't too shabby. 1 point at home is going to get the natives restless.
But since the blessed introduction of the transfer window, January is usually when fans look to their signings rather than their results as an indicator for how their team will fare in the run in. It stokes up unreasonable expectations, firstly that you MUST sign someone in January. Furthermore, you now must sign someone on deadline day, or at least the day before, if you are a club to be taken seriously. Timing meant the general consensus was that January was a disaster for Orient, as skipper Stephen Dawson left for Barnsley on deadline day and we weren't able to sign a player in a similar mould to replace him. Thank God Dean Cox has signed an extended contract. The signing of Dean Leacock is another positive sign that the Os are evolving rather than regressing. He looks assured and has been fit enough to play 90 minutes straight away. If he can avoid injury then he could be a better signing than Adam Chambers, a similar transfer that Orient were only able to complete due to a shocking injury record over the previous few seasons.
It's not just the loss of a tireless midfielder that will impact the Os for the rest of the season though, it is the loss of a genuine captain. This weekend the John Terry debate has moved onto "Is a captain important"? In my view a successful dressing room has a combination of personalities. Calm/reason, inspirational, friend and motivational. Taking into consideration the personality of the team you need the right balance between the manager, coaching staff and captain (or senior players more generally). Before the promotion season in 2005/6 the Os were slightly unbalanced. Martin Ling was calm and reasonable but slightly aloof and you certainly couldn't imagine him as passionate. His assistant Ian Culverhouse was by all accounts (including Ling's) a ranter but too much so for a coach and he alienated the players. We had a revolving door of skippers, most of the model pros, setting an example without actually being a leader of men.
Ling got rid of Culverhouse, brought ex-captain Dean Smith in and then signed John Mackie. Mackie was a similar character to Culverhouse but because he was one of them the players accepted him and followed him. Smith was there as someone the players could talk to, who would part an arm round the players if they needed it. He would instil self confidence by expressing his belief in players and backing them all the way, with Mackie kicking anyone up the backside if they tried to take advantage of Smith's good nature. The balance was absolutely crucial to the Os success. When Mackie left Ling was either unable or unwilling to sign someone with a personality as big as Mackie's and the team was rudderless as a result.
Similarly Dawson has been just as an important part of Orient's success over the last 18 months. He appears to be a similar character to Slade who is an unusually rounded manager, capable of being all things to all men. But Dawson is the one who takes that personality out onto the pitch, who sets the example and the standard for his team mates to follow. Orient were never beaten in a game until 90 minutes were up because Dawson didn't believe he was beaten and didn't give up . And if he didn't give up he wouldn't let any of the other players give up. Dawson imposed his personality on the team and it was needed because he was unique - he taught others how to be a model pro (aside from fairly frequent dissent!) and what they can achieve by doing so. There are some players in the current squad who didn't need to learn that lesson - particularly the two vice-captains, Chorley and Spring. But do either of them have the force of personality to impose that on the rest of the team? Do either of them have that sheer belief and self confidence that in times of adversity they won't be looking for a leader, they will BE that leader? I think Chorley is the stronger character of the two but not to the same extent as Dawson - and he isn't even first choice centre back at the moment.
Orient are going to have to finish the season with a key component missing and their success will depend on just how they they can paper over the cracks. But this summer, regardless of what positions we need to fill Russell Slade is going to have to find someone who can assume the captaincy. Dawson has left not only big boots to fill but a big armband too.
Perceptions are interesting because fans were most disappointed with the home draw against Chesterfield, who have actually had something of a revival this month. That draw was off the back of a celebrated win away at Preston - who have been terrible. With hindsight he most disappointing result has to be the home defeat to Colchester, who looked ordinary and their form in January has suggested as much. What we've really learned is that, not for the first time, the Os are stronger away from home. Sure, get too close to Scotland and we get stuffed but 2 away wins out of 3 isn't too shabby. 1 point at home is going to get the natives restless.
But since the blessed introduction of the transfer window, January is usually when fans look to their signings rather than their results as an indicator for how their team will fare in the run in. It stokes up unreasonable expectations, firstly that you MUST sign someone in January. Furthermore, you now must sign someone on deadline day, or at least the day before, if you are a club to be taken seriously. Timing meant the general consensus was that January was a disaster for Orient, as skipper Stephen Dawson left for Barnsley on deadline day and we weren't able to sign a player in a similar mould to replace him. Thank God Dean Cox has signed an extended contract. The signing of Dean Leacock is another positive sign that the Os are evolving rather than regressing. He looks assured and has been fit enough to play 90 minutes straight away. If he can avoid injury then he could be a better signing than Adam Chambers, a similar transfer that Orient were only able to complete due to a shocking injury record over the previous few seasons.
It's not just the loss of a tireless midfielder that will impact the Os for the rest of the season though, it is the loss of a genuine captain. This weekend the John Terry debate has moved onto "Is a captain important"? In my view a successful dressing room has a combination of personalities. Calm/reason, inspirational, friend and motivational. Taking into consideration the personality of the team you need the right balance between the manager, coaching staff and captain (or senior players more generally). Before the promotion season in 2005/6 the Os were slightly unbalanced. Martin Ling was calm and reasonable but slightly aloof and you certainly couldn't imagine him as passionate. His assistant Ian Culverhouse was by all accounts (including Ling's) a ranter but too much so for a coach and he alienated the players. We had a revolving door of skippers, most of the model pros, setting an example without actually being a leader of men.
Ling got rid of Culverhouse, brought ex-captain Dean Smith in and then signed John Mackie. Mackie was a similar character to Culverhouse but because he was one of them the players accepted him and followed him. Smith was there as someone the players could talk to, who would part an arm round the players if they needed it. He would instil self confidence by expressing his belief in players and backing them all the way, with Mackie kicking anyone up the backside if they tried to take advantage of Smith's good nature. The balance was absolutely crucial to the Os success. When Mackie left Ling was either unable or unwilling to sign someone with a personality as big as Mackie's and the team was rudderless as a result.
Similarly Dawson has been just as an important part of Orient's success over the last 18 months. He appears to be a similar character to Slade who is an unusually rounded manager, capable of being all things to all men. But Dawson is the one who takes that personality out onto the pitch, who sets the example and the standard for his team mates to follow. Orient were never beaten in a game until 90 minutes were up because Dawson didn't believe he was beaten and didn't give up . And if he didn't give up he wouldn't let any of the other players give up. Dawson imposed his personality on the team and it was needed because he was unique - he taught others how to be a model pro (aside from fairly frequent dissent!) and what they can achieve by doing so. There are some players in the current squad who didn't need to learn that lesson - particularly the two vice-captains, Chorley and Spring. But do either of them have the force of personality to impose that on the rest of the team? Do either of them have that sheer belief and self confidence that in times of adversity they won't be looking for a leader, they will BE that leader? I think Chorley is the stronger character of the two but not to the same extent as Dawson - and he isn't even first choice centre back at the moment.
Orient are going to have to finish the season with a key component missing and their success will depend on just how they they can paper over the cracks. But this summer, regardless of what positions we need to fill Russell Slade is going to have to find someone who can assume the captaincy. Dawson has left not only big boots to fill but a big armband too.
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