7th February 2015 - Yeovil Town beat relegation rivals Crawley Town, to send the same O's team (minus Odubajo) to the bottom of League One.
Let that sink in for a moment. The EXACT same team that performed heroics and re-wrote the record books last season, have just hit rock-bottom.
A lot has happened in 37 weeks (258 Days to be precise). Pretty much all of it can be blamed on Francesco Becchetti's new regime. Allow me to explain over the course of this lengthy blog entry.
First off, the one thing that can't be blamed on the new regime is that Moses Odubajo was sold to last-seasons rivals Brentford. That was down to Hearn / Matchroom / Slade. For the record i think a million pound was an absolute steal for Brentford and if he had to go, the form he was in, I'd have thought upward of £2.5m would have been realistic.
Secondly, Barry Hearn seems to have found an owner that is willing to pump money into the cause. How he's gone about it we'll discuss, but nobody can say he hasn't thrown money at it.
There are currently two schools of thought about the plight of the O's:
- It's clearly all down to the players. They've now failed under four managers.
- The way the club is run is in such a state nobody really understands what's going on anymore.
Personally I'm 100% behind the latter theory and with a couple of shrewd appointments (more about why this won't happen later..) this team could easily be competing in the play-offs (not now though because it's too late).
How it all went wrong:
Appointing a Sporting Director.
This was an absolutely nonsense position to create that made no sense when it happened and still doesn't now. Nobody really understands why Mauro Milanese was brought in and what he actually added to the club.
It basically undermined Russell Slade's position and ultimately made it untenable for him to carry on as Manager.
Milanese has now been relieved of all his positions at the O's. Probably because he acted as an agent and a Sporting Director in some of the transfer deals.
Giving the players a pay-rise / signings players on a fortune.
By all accounts the first thing that the new regime arranged was to increase all contracts at the club by 20-25% after last season heroics and to spend big.
Step forward Jay Simpson, Darius Henderson & Jobi McAnuff. If rumour is to be believed their combined salary is £20k a week. Are they good players? Yes they are. Did they want to play for Russell Slade? Yes they did. Are they now lumbered at a club in turmoil? Yes they are.
Giving Russell Slade an ultimatum / then sacking him / then refusing to let him go / etc.
Did Russell engineer a move away from the O's? Probably. Would you blame him? No. If your new employees who from the offset didn't want you in charge gave you an escape clause would you take it? Yes you would.
The bottom line is that Russell Slade was the best manager we've had in 30 years, is highly regarded in the game, was voted manager of the year last season, had the contacts when strings needed to be pulled and as a League One club, was about as good a manager as we could have asked for. He remains the most successful of a four 'managers' we've had this season.
Waving goodbye to Matt Porter.
Hugely knowledgeable ex-CEO of Leyton Orient should have been given the chance to ease the new owners into it. As it turns out he was thrown out the club after 86 days of the new regime.
Nothing wrong with having your own people in, just let the old people help out with the transition.
Things as simple as paying the Sky TV bill that hadn't been paid the other day or when the players salaries had been missed. The signing off of employment contracts. The approval of the referral cheques. The minutes from the fans forum. The list is endless.
New CEO & Sporting Director talking to fans on the train.
It's not the brightest of things to be doing. Spilling the beans to fans before and after matches, telling them about future plans. These things should be kept in-house.
Appointing Kevin Nugent as Caretaker, then Manager, then Coach, then Interim, then sacking him.
Nobody will ever know why Nugent claimed that he was the manager, but Milanese was telling people on trains he was the caretaker, then it all got changed round again and Nuge claimed he wasn't the manager but would be soon. Then he finally emerged as Interim Manager. Nobody seems to have known what happened and ultimately it was all a load of bull because as soon as Russell Slade left, Mauro Milanese was picking the team. How do i know this? Because after Russell Slade left, the dressing room was lost to the new owners and all the structure previously put in place had collapsed.
Sacking Nugent and replacing him Mauro Milanese as Manager.
Another nonsense managerial appointment as Milanese was out of his depth, nobody liked him, nobody really understood him and nobody wanted him there.
Believe it or not, the O's currently have a strong team with some loud voices in it. They can spot a fraud a mile away, just like any of us can in our own field of business. They knew what Milanese was able to bring to the table. They didn't play for him when Nugent was the stooge, they weren't going to play for him now.
Sacking Milanese and not replacing him adequately.
This was it. This was when the owners could've made something happen. All they had to do was appoint someone with Football League experience. Someone who the players could believe in. They didn't. They replaced him with Fabio Liverani who had previously managed youth teams in Italy.
The appointment of Liverani was the final nail in the coffin and has relegated us. The short of it being, he has no experience in this league, no contacts in the UK, no kudos with the players and can't even seem to rouse them in the slightest.
Basically the players don't understand him or are even attempting to make it work. They sense another fraud and i agree with them. Speaking through an interpreter everything gets lost in translation. Whether its a rollocking or something tactical it all just gets lost.
All 3 managerial appointments have been poor.
Nugent, Milanese, Liverani. I'd even argue that you could call them Managers. None of them have or have had the pedigree for the job in hand.
The correct appointment would've been a Mark Robins or similar. Or if we are pushing the boat out, Brian McDermott or Neil Warnock to get us out this mess. The players would recognise these types as respected football people and play for them.
Unfortunately for us, the names mentioned above would probably speak to Russell Slade or the current crop of players beforehand who would warn them away.
Backroom Staff.
The entire backroom staff have been replaced except for Nugent who is now paid a fair whack to not really do much by all accounts.
Since Kevin Dearden has left, the scouting network has collapsed to such an extent that we haven't even been scouting our next opposition. This is particularly amateur and is almost single-handedly to blame for the recent deluge of set-pieces we've conceded from. All down to the fact that we have nobody out there scouting for us.
The new physio literally isn't a physio. He isn't qualified. Apparently this is getting grief from the authorities. Another extremely amateur mistake.
The new Goalkeeping coach doubles as the translator for Liverani in interviews, but more telling the highest level that he has played is amateur football. Which equates to an amateur ex-goalkeeper is training our two senior 'keepers and also our promising England U-18 starlet.
We've also appointed a fantastically titled 'First Team Liaison Manager' if anyone can help with that please let me know.
Transfers.
As has been mentioned above, as we now have no scouting network and a manager with no contacts in the British game, the only people we're able to sign are either desperate for a club (out of contract like Josh Wright, Plasmati), returning from injury (Neal Eardley, Jack Price), or young and inexperienced (Lundstram, Hedges).
All those mentioned above are regularly debated about who was responsible for signing each of them. That speaks volumes in itself.
Let's not even talk about Baudry training with Peterborough for a week, then told to come back, then told he's going out on loan, then not being for sale at any price. Poor sod.
Ask yourself if you'd join Orient at the moment. A manager you can't understand and a whole heap of backroom staff that don't really do much or know what they're doing.
Dossena.
Earns £20k a week. Nobody has admitted to signing him. According to newspaper reports, we didn't even scout him, he just sort of turned up and we started paying him. Hasn't been seen for a while.
The First Team.
Whilst i don't think they've covered themselves in glory of late, i find it hard to put the blame at their door. As a defender you're told to mark a certain man, hold a high line, drop back, play offside.. Or a forward is told to run into certain spaces, put someone on their weaker-foot, etc. Even midfielders are given instructions about playing deep, pushing up, hit the wings, go long.. but if we're not scouting any teams, the management haven't this information to give and we're getting picked off. Week after week. And the management don't know how to counter it. It is so obvious that we've not done any research on teams.
Injuries.
In my opinion, half of our injured players aren't injured at all, they're just swinging the lead and hoping for a transfer ASAP, to try and rid themselves of the bad management they've ended up with.
We've all had crap jobs, where we've wanted to leave. Amazingly 258 days after being at Wembley, being at the O's is a crap job.
A British manager, one that understands the psyche, could sort this out immediately.
