Why the O's will miss Ben Chorley

Like him or loathe him, Ben Chorley man has left Orient after three-and-a-half years to join Stevenage on a longer-term contract than the O's were seemingly willing to give.

First and foremost I'd like to wish him all the best for the future (after we sneaked a win there last week) and good luck for his time at Broadhall Way / Lamex Stadium.

Now we're free to discuss what Ben brought to the team and also what we'll be lacking in his absence.

2011/12 season wasn't great for Orient in the main as we've covered in previous posts, in particular it didn't seem to go well for Ben Chorley. Regularly left out of the team to make way for Terrell Forbes, Scott Cuthbert and Dean Leacock this didn't bode well for when he did factor into the team as very uncharacteristic-like sloppy mistakes and shirking his duties were apparent in his play. As O's fans these were quite mystifying as the previous two-years performances and regular appearances had been solid for Ben.

I feel the culmination of this angst was away to relegation candidates Wycombe on the 06.03.2012. A totally unbalanced and dire Orient team* struggled in spectacular fashion to cope with Wycombe.

Four-Nil down after 39 minutes isn't great shakes by anybodies standard but it was in the 33rd minute that I witnessed (with my own eyes, a few yards from me) an extremely frustrated Chorley lambast 21 year old debutant Syam Ben Youssef.
If that doesn't seem bad enough, Youssef had only entered the fray in the 31st minute as Dean Leacock didn't seem to like the idea of being two-nil down to the basement boys on a cold-evening in Buckinghamshire and went down injured after thirty minutes.

That's correct, two minutes into his senior debut (and yet to touch a ball) Youssef had Chorley eye-balling him and for want of a better word, totally bollocking him off. This isn't how a senior pro should've gone about his business.

For the record. O's went on to lose against Wycombe 4-2 that night. The French-Tunisian Syam Ben Youssef left at the end of the season after nine appearances and has re-surfaced playing for Astra Giurgiu in Romania. I though he was pretty decent.

 When Stephen Dawson left for Barnsley we needed a new captain and most assumed that would be Chorley. I think Ben thought it'd be him too. The captaincy was handed to Matthew Spring. I believe this was a mistake on the part of Russell Slade and it well and truly split the camp in two. Chorley heading up the south of the river contingent (Chorley, Forbes, Lisbie Moses, Porter & Mooney) whilst Spring looked after the Essex-Based and North of the river bunch (Spring, Leacock, Cuthbert, Smith, Cox, McSweeney). Whilst I've no conclusive proof of the above, there was a split-squad and this became quite apparent among the O's faithful as things were getting worse.

Ben's not all trouble though. Not at all. I was quite shocked when he left the O's as he's been back to his brilliant best this season. A real captain, leader and influential player on the pitch.

All rifts seemed to have been healed and Slade was quick to heap praise on Chorley quite recently. When talking about Moses Odubajo's performances and development Slade mentioned the encouragement that Chorley had shown to Moses and all the younger players.

So what can Steveange fans expect of Chorley? Strong in the air, pretty reliable with the ball at his feet, strong in the challenge and tactically aware. Above all a very good professional who looks after himself well. As I said above. I'm going to miss him.

I'm writing this blog entry before the Tranmere game and I must be honest, am quite worried about the leadership in our team. Nathan Clarke is the club captain, but he's injured, so Scott Cuthbert will be the captain for today alongside the excellent Matthieu Baudry.

Scott Cuthbert is a fine defender, one of the best i can remember at the O's, but against Southend he didn't strike me as a leader. In fact the whole team against Southend seemed to lack leadership and direction. This worries me as its a step back to how we were last season when we were in free-fall.

I suppose only time will tell but at the moment I'd have preferred Chorley to be standing with us and leading us, rather than one of our rivals.

What constitutes a good season for the O's.

Supporting Leyton Orient is generally a chore that costs a bit of a whack and takes up more time than you'd like. Sort of like going to the dentist every week. The bad times outweigh the good and we're always having to fight over something. If we're not fighting to stay in the league, we're fighting to keep our players. If we're not fighting other teams with bigger budgets, we're fighting for our lives about the Olympic Stadium legacy. It's ultimately a perennial struggle.

With all that in mind what would the average O's fan believe would be a good season?

How we finished last season should give us a good indication. We finished one place and 7 points ahead of relegated Wycombe Wanderers.

Yep, that seems quite a comfortable gap, but truth be told, it was a long slog to get to that point and we'll be thankful to the Messy Irish, sorry the Irish Messi (Alan Judge of Notts County), for finally putting the nail in Wycombe's coffin with a very-late screamer at Adams Park in the penultimate game of the season.

On the last day of the season O's spanked already relegated Rochdale 2-1 in a non-event and Wycombe lost two-nil away to Sheffield Wednesday in another dead-rubber of a game. The league looked easy on the eye but the reality was a different story.

The 2011/12 season was meant to be the dawn of a new era. Slade was comfortably in situ and the previous season (2010/11) we'd finished 7th and narrowly missed out on a play-off position by two points (or one and an inferior GD). We'd had a tremendous FA Cup run winning away at (soon to be Premiership bound) Norwich and Swansea,  we also drew at home to Arsenal before getting knocked out to a Chamakh hat-trick at the Emirates. Throw in the 8-2 victory over Droylsden, Dave Pace getting all animated, plenty of TV matches and some sublime football and you almost forgot it was Orient. Chuck in 3 players from up the road going by the names of M'Poku, Carroll & Kane and the season had been a resounding success. Good times were coming.

This couldn't have been further from the truth. We lost three key players in the summer, Revell and Whing to lower-league teams and McGleish effectively retired. Come pre-season time and the re-building had hardly commenced. We were ill prepared and a shambles at the start of the season. After 10 games we hadn't won a single match and the wheels had firmly fallen off. To give Slade his due though, the following 9 games O's were unbeaten and looking solid again.

Then it all went horribly wrong again, Omozusi got in trouble with the law, we cashed in on Daniels and Dawson during the January window to Bournemouth and Barnsley respectively and I haven't even mentioned the Goalkeeping and left-back problems we had. The season was effectively a write-off and as documented above we did well to finish 7 points safe in the end.

Fast-forward back to the present day and we haven't started this season too well either, serving up sometimes sublime and sometimes ridiculous football. Mixing up silky football and solid formations along with long-ball shite and some of the most odd-looking team selections you could dream off.

Things have calmed down a bit now, the team has settled, contracts have been signed, players released and Symes has eaten cake. This is good news, things are looking.. pretty average.

Since November we seem to have settled on a 442 formation with players playing in the right positions. There's also been an emphasis of late on attacking teams from the start rather than going behind and trying to claw a game back.

We've shown we can compete in this division. We've generally beaten the teams you would've expected us to beat as well as taking 4 points of Brentford and winning away vs Swindon. I think we can safely say that Doncaster are the only team that has us truly defeated.

How's this for an oddity. Of our games played so far we've only drawn two. Both against Crewe. We're rubbish at getting back into games (haven't won and only drawn twice from losing positions), yet we're amazing at holding onto a lead ( haven't lost and again only drawn twice from winning positions).

Where do we go from here? I'm afraid to tell you we're not going up either automatically or via the play-offs. We'd need to average two points per game from hereon in to reach sixth spot and that's not gonna happen. We'll not get relegated either. For the record I think you'll need 76/77 points to reach the play-offs and maybe only 45 points to avoid relegation.

We also have a double-headed regional final vs the Shrimps in the JPT and hopefully this'll give us a much needed day out at Wembley and our revenues a shot in the arm through prize-money and TV coverage.

Personally speaking I'll happily take a top-half finish (we'll need 66 points), which would mean we have to keep our form of the last 10/12 games up. Throw a JPT final appearance into it as well and i'd have said that the O's would have a had a fairly average (decent) season.

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.

Lacklustre O's beaten by stylish Donny

When a groundsman wins the man of the match award you know you've hardly been at a spectacle of a match.

Step forward Doncaster Rovers groundsman Andy Thompson (@Andy_Thompson21) for getting this game on at all. Along with the help of several Doncaster snow shifters and a barmy Orient one the game went ahead as planned on a perfectly playable surface,  though there might have been a frozen bit here and there. It seemed quite mild too to be fair and a lot warmer and less windy than back down in London.

The trains were running fine on the way up despite the weather and the journey was pretty uneventful, though my companion was most pleased to spot a floating RTV31 locomotive based somewhere around Peterborough. This would ultimately be the highlight of the day.

A floating train in Peterborough.

The walk from station to stadium was quite pretty in the snow and almost picturesque if trading estates and warehouses are your thing. After a bit of a walk where the parking and fast-food gets increasingly expensive, you finally arrive at the Keepmoat Stadium and realise you really are in the middle of nowhere.

The Keepmoat itself is pretty impressive in this era of modern stadia. Sort of a mini St Mary's. It has a Sports Centre backing onto it and that looked quite decent too.

£24 to get in, decent facilities, scalding hot water, comfy seats and plenty of room. They even moved the 200 of us because of the snow which was a nice touch.

A panoramic of the Keepmoat Stadium, Doncaster.

Russell Slade decided to rest most of our decent players because they're all absolutely knackered. I can see the logic of this and even thought the team that he sent out would be quite quick on the counter and able to do a bit of damage that way.

Jones and a pretty solid back four in front of him, Smith and Griffith holding and the other 4 using a bit of pace to attack on the break. Simple plan. Not that easy to execute. Charlie MacDonald at 5'7'' and debutant Ade Azeez (on-loan from Charlton) didn't even make a dent in  the lofty Doncaster centre-backs, Moses ran out of steam after a few minutes and Cox might as well have not bothered to turn up.

Random picture of Russell as not much else happened.

With a lack of movement and activity in front of them Smith and Griffith' looked lost and the defence could only hold-on for 19 minutes before it was breached. From their first corner of the game, O's switched off and Rob Jones powered home a fine header.

And that was that really. O's offered absolutely nothing in response. We weren't quite as bad as the BBC stats made out and we did have a couple of hit and hope shots but ultimately it was game over.

On 54 minutes somebody woke Chris Brown up and after being caught offside a couple of times and slotting one wide, he managed to hit the target and make it 2-0 to Doncaster.

During the 2nd half O's introduced Mooney, Cook & then Rowlands but although it shored them up a bit, this was clearly Doncaster's game and there was nothing Orient could do to alter that.

The ref blew the final whistle, 6,500 Doncaster fans went home happy and 200 O's trudged back home knowing that their team had just been beaten by a team that will more than likely get promoted this year.

Doncaster are strong when they need to be and also mix it up by playing some neat football. They're easily the strongest team I've seen this year.

O's Man of the Match - Ben Chorley, played like a captain should and held it together well. It could've been a lot worse without Big Ben at the back.

Orient - Jones, Sawyer, Chorley, Cuthbert, McSweeney (Cook), Cox, Smith, Griffith (Rowland), Odubaju, MacDonald, Azeez (Mooney)

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.