How Leyton Orient fell from top to bottom

25th May 2014 - Chris Dagnall misses the spot-kick that promotes Rotherham to the Championship after a nail-biting thriller of a League One Play-Off Final.

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:

1. It's clearly all down to the players. They've now failed under four managers.
2. 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.

The Italian Job - Prologue

I've dusted off the old blog and decided to pen a few (a lot of) words about the current state of affairs at the O's.

I'm not going to talk about anything from the 2013/14 season as i prefer to keep that locked away in my brain. After all, when Coxy put us two-up just before half-time, there ain't too much more to mention apart from comfortably seeing the game out...

Moving on.. basically it's all gone to shit. I'm gonna attempt this by having chapters. First of i think I'll start out with what i believe happened over the close-season. Then move on to Russell Slade, then Nugent, now Milanese. Then maybe a bit on the players. Hopefully there'll be more logic behind what i type than a basic rant.

I'm pretty sure that nobody will agree with my views. And that's fine. I just feel that i have to get a few bits off my chest..

Elliot Omozusi - The Return

Orient currently have a problem. It's a fairly big problem and one that hasn't been rectified for around 18 months.

The problem is a lack of decent full-backs. Note the plural. One would be nice. Two would be better.

Ever since Charlie Daniels was flogged to moneybags Bournemouth and Whing decided to forward his career by moving, er, backwards, to Oxford, we've struggled to replace either right or left-back until this season.

Gary Sawyer down the left seems fine, not particularly dynamic I'll grant you that, but plenty adequate for a league one defence that is the 8th best in the division. Ditto with McSweeney done the right-hand side. Throw in the emergence of Moses Odubajo and the fact that Lloyd James can play there (not very well though) and we're quite covered. The problem now is that we're extremely stretched within the squad due to the amount of games we've played, the players in question look knackered, and an addition to the squad would be more than welcome.

Step forward Elliot Omozusi. The local lad from Homerton who we originally signed from Fulham in the summer of 2010. This is also the same Elliot Omozusi whose contract we had terminated back in November 2011 due to crimes committed.

Elliot Omozusi. Sad times.

 Daily Mail - Omozusi jailed over bid to take gang revenge on murder witness

It would appear that Omuzusi has been training with the O's since his release last autumn due to crimes committed and has proven himself worthy of a new contract that runs until the end of the season at the O's.

Russell Slade and Matt Porter have spoken out and mentioned that Omozusi had made a bad mistake, he's now served his time, got his head down and deserves a second chance.

BBC Sport - Leyton Orient re-sign defender

Personally I'm all for giving people a second chance. If they balls that up then its a lot easier to wave goodbye knowing you're tried your hardest to help out.

As you would expect comparisons have been drawn with Marlon King, Lee Hughes and that drink-driver 'keeper that ended up inside a few years back. Whilst i don't feel that the crime in this instance is a bad as the others mentioned, feelings are high amongst O's fans.

Feelings run high on the O's message board.

Now we have to jump back to the crux of Orient's problem. We need full-backs. And Elliot Omozusi is a good one. He won our young player of the year award for 2010/11 season and is clearly a talent. He has England youth honours from Under-16's up to the Under-19's and at 24 years of age he's a free-agent and a player that the O's could really utilise.

Elliot Omozusi. Happier times.

Omozusi win's award.

Will it all work out? Time will tell I guess. Elliot is equally as good as, if not better than what we have in the team currently. Whilst predominantly a right-back i think he could provide good enough cover on the left too. I believe this is a good signing and hopefully Elliot himself can come out, prove he's learned the errors of his ways and do some community work for the club along the way too.

Now all we need is another left-footed player in the squad.

Leyton Orient Fans Trust - 13.12.2012

I was there on Thursday night and was firmly in the 'Slade Out' camp before this upturn in fortunes, so i was looking for answers from him.

Some answers where forthcoming, some weren't.

Powerpoint Presentation:
I have to dabble with this sort of thing for a living so weren't blown away by it and thinking we've got an Einstein as manager.

Presentation Contents:
Yes. On the face of it Russell has got us being about as professional as we can be off the pitch. I don't doubt this for one minute.

Our training facilities look better, are better, and must make the players feel better. The staff we have in place seem very capable and seem to be in it not for the individual gain but for the team benefit.

Youth Setup:
We get about £200k in funding per year for our tier 3 academy status, we drop another £200k on it ourselves and on the face of it, it all looks well setup and run properly. I think they mentioned extending it to Chigwell, East Essex, and maybe further afield.

Medical / Fitness:
Again i think Russ has this nailed, we look pro in all but facilities available.

Statistics:
Yep. We've all seem them before, think football manager and you've pretty much nailed it. Turnover rates, pass completion, heat maps, opposition stats and so on.

It's all very useful and Russ and one of his assistants (Glen?) proved a quite compelling argument that we've not been pasted by anyone this year, we're only 'inches' away from succeeding a few times, and ultimately the long-term plan seems to be bearing fruit now. Apparently at no point this season we haven't had the 7th worse defence in the division or something along them lines.

While the stats are good and easy on the eye, i reckon with full-access to the stats everyone on this board could have pointed out some counter-arguments about how dire we've been.

You don't need the stats to tell you that at the start of the season we were long-ball, very narrow, Cox was in the middle and Mooney wouldn't have been let in the front-door on a match-day.

Player Database / Scouting Network:

Nuge collates all the scouting reports (Local, North-East & Midlands) (which seems to be quite extensive now) and has the better players tracked through a database. Russ quipped that after Moses kept getting roasted by Shrewsbury's Taylor, he went straight to the top of the collated players.

Formations:
We have three. A 442, a 442 (lopsided) and i think the other was a 433 though i could be mistaken. We've used all 3 in our unbeaten run. Half the time I'm not quite sure what formation we play so i can't argue that. Bit of a change from a year or two back when Russ said that 442 was dated and that 451 added more flexibility.

Personally i couldn't care how we line up. What is clear is that we need players in their right position and a tactic. I don't even mind long-ball if we play it right.

Prozone:
This has angered me for three days now. For less than £20k we could get a product in that we've been using on the ponce for the last 6 weeks which has been hugely beneficial.

Let's have this straight, a £20k prozone isn't what skysports or Arsenal use. I reckon that's nearer to about £500k and comes with all the bells and whistles. For £20k you probably get a limited software package and a certain amount of resource from prozone. If we get this stuff in, we'll probably need extra operatives to use it correctly (as well as the Glen fella), so that's more money.

Is it really £20k? Who knows. But if it really is that beneficial and is under say £50k, Matt Porter needs to look at himself and the board and get this extra £50k of spend from somewhere.

We currently use this software - http://www.dartfish.com/en/software/index.htm
This is prozone - http://www.prozonesports.com/products.html

Lisbie:
Is a different class and Russ was singing his praises. He ain't lost his legs at 34 years of age and we should be grateful to Matt Porter for getting him in.

Allsop / Keepers':
We've offered him a deal. He's class and is on a massive learning curve every game. Someone asked if he was first choice keeper now, Dearden replied 'whoever gets the shirt on Saturdays is first choice' but Slade was nodding in response to the original question. Allsop looks our number 1 until he drops some massive clangers.

Jones is fit but can't get in the team, Butcher starts training this week. Amazing that we have three top-quality England Under-23 keepers on our books.

Dearden got angered by the fact that he was called up on whether Jones was put in vs Everton for sentimentality reasons but batted that one for 6 straight away. Although to me it looked a bit empty and i do think Jones was put in cos he's a Blues fan.

Cook / Rowlands:
Two fantastic talents who know how to win football matches. Both offered deals.

George Porter:
Not much to say really. He's lined his pockets but not really gonna progress as a footballer at Burnley. They're already looking to loan him out but as of yet, no takers. This is down to having no real pedigree on the greater game having come from Cray Wanderers instead of through an Academy.

Personally speaking here.. i thought we had a right result out of this deal. Again a personal view but i can George at Luton / Daggers in the not too distant future. Floating between conference and League Two.

The emergence of Moses:
Everyone at the club seems to be impressed at how Mo has come along this year. They'll fight tooth and nail to keep him and is now an integral part of the team. Russ seemed to think that with the ball in front of him (full-back) he's a much better prospect than having to collect the ball and beat a man (winger). This could be down to his age, experience and maybe a lack a spatial awareness. Never really thought that much about it to be honest, but what Russ said seems pretty on the button.

Laird / Cureton / Andrew:
For reasons you've all discussed anyway, it hasn't happened for any of these players at the O's. It happens in football. When this happens you try to move players out.

Loaness / Dickson:
Aside from chronic injuries, the lack of team spirit last year was probably the reason we scraped over the line eventually. Slade said that the loanees had a totally negative effect and some choice words were used. I think the full-back from Southampton in particularly irked Slade.

Team Spirit / Griffith:
Some get the hump when dropped (Smith), some rise to it (Cox) and then you have players like Griffith. A constant motivator in the changing room who wants the team to progress (i can imagine Dawson was like this). Griff doesn't moan about stuff, does his job as a pro, works his cobs off, gives 100% when called on, encourages those that are picked, gees up those that are benched and is a genuine all round nice guy.

Matt P said this is up there with the promotion team and the cup-run team in terms of togetherness and team spirit.

Mooney / Symes:
Mooney is a fantastic talent, has responded well when called upon, very popular with the lads and enjoying his football once more. Symes can be a world-beater but hasn't set the world on fire when called upon. This will be looked at in January.

Xmas Do:
Players all went to Ireland after the Bury match. All well-behaved and no issues to report.

Strikers / Free Transfers:
Strikers / Attackers are a strange breed, especially when dealing with free-transfers. Nobody in football can really highlight who's a talent and who isn't, sometimes it just clicks for a player (Mooney), sometimes it doesn't (Cureton). At the end of the day it's a free-transfer, the players are free-transfers for a reason.

In summary (my words):
Leyton Orient (all things considered) should be finishing in the top half of League Two to about the bottom half of League One. Let us not kid ourselves. Our first target of the year is 50 points.

Russell Slade seems to have made us more professional both off and on the pitch. Off the pitch we have a tidy setup, on the pitch we should survive each year. Like it or not, this is job done.

Here's the clincher.. and this might come back to haunt me.. Matt Porter (and Barry Hearn) are a godsend i reckon.

Of those 24 clubs between mid-table league one and mid-table league two, who would you join?

[b]We are one of the best, if not THE best setup club that you could ask to join in that bracket of clubs. We pay our wages, bills, fines, medical stuff regularly. We're stable. Our ground might not be to everyone's liking, but its generally, clean and looked after. Our facilities are on par with our competitors. And we're in a prime location.[/b]

What is also apparent, is that if we were to ever reach the Championship, i now feel the club is dynamic enough and in a prime position to grow to meet its demands and remain a permanent fixture in the division (sort of like Peterbrough, Barnsley, Bristol City):
1. We don't dish out silly contracts.
2. The training facilities and youth-setup would organically grow bigger.
3. The facilities could be upgraded.
4. The off-field staff could be increased in the right-areas.

I'm glad I went on Thursday night, not so much an eye-opener but i left with the feeling that we're in very capable hands. I would seriously advise everyone to turn up for the next one.