Dark Years Not Days

It’s always difficult to know what to say to people in their most difficult moments. You fear saying the wrong thing, probably because nothing can give any real kind of comfort. The worst thing to say is “things will be ok”. In those dark moments it doesn’t feel like it, it feels like it’ll never be the same again.

I am really fed up being told that things will be ok for Orient. I know the people offering words of solace are well meaning and the sentiment behind them is appreciated. But although a light is finally being shone on Orient’s problems, the magnitude of them isn’t understood by people who haven’t been living and breathing the last three years of turmoil at Brisbane Road.

I first started getting annoyed when Radio 5 Live’s reporter at the Crewe game attributed the clubs downfall to the high turnover of managers. That doesn’t even begin to tell the story of the way the club has been mismanaged for the last three years. The managerial merry go round seems like little more than a sideshow.

As had been said many times, relegation isn’t the biggest problem Orient are facing at the moment. Even though it didn’t feel like it on Saturday evening relegation is almost incidental compared to the precarious existence of the club. It’s hard to keep perspective when it is your club but right now it feels like Orient have more in common with Stockport County than Grimsby Town. Nice as it is that clubs like Grimsby have offered their stories along with their hope that we will follow in their footsteps it is hard to be optimistic that it will happen.

The significance of the moment has almost lulled everyone into thinking that we have reached the bottom of the barrel. 112 years unbroken Football League membership, thrown away by an incompetent egomaniac. Short of going bust it is the worst thing we could feasibly imagine happening to us. On the field, Orient’s fall is complete. But is it?

Orient and non-Orient fans are now talking of returning to the Football League as soon as possible, We have hit rock bottom and now have to bounce back. Just because the drop into non-league football is a symbolic one it doesn’t mean that Orient can’t continue to drop. If the club isn’t stabilised on and off the field we are likely to continue our fall. Given the disasterous mis-management of the last three years that won’t be easy and is highly unlikely to have an immediate effect. Trying to walk before we run could lead to more stumbles before the club can start to move forward again.

This isn’t pessimism, it is realism. There have been 28 teams relegated since the number of clubs relegated from the Football League was increased to 2. Of the 28 teams relegated, 12 haven’t returned to the League at all. Nearly half. On average, it has taken the teams that have returned four years to regain their league status. The average doesn’t tell the story though. The most concerning statistic is about the clubs who haven’t been able to return immediately. Only four teams have come straight back up. Hardly any clubs have returned to the league between 2 and 4 years after their relegation. Clubs have either come straight back up or it is a 5 or 6 year wait to return. That is if you are in the 54% of clubs who come back at all.

Danny Webb made a last ditch plea to be allowed to plan for next season before it was too late before finally resigning in frustration. We’re now a month further on. I don’t think anyone holds out any real hope of anyone starting to run the club properly again before 12 June. Once again, even in a best case scenario, Orient won’t be ready to re-sign their best players and approach leading targets until it’s too late. And who would join Orient in its current state, even if a new owner had just stepped in? If we are playing in the National League next year it is going to be with players that no one else wanted at the start of the summer. That is eerily reminiscent of 3 years ago when Barry Hearn sold the club in the middle of the summer. Whoever is going to put a team together for next year is going to have to be astute and bring together a collection of solid professionals, capable of stabilising the club at its current level. We need that platform before we can think about building again. If past experience is any guide that building job will take years to complete rather than just months.