What's going on at the Orient?
Almost exactly a year ago, my Orient supporting friends and I made the journey to Milton Keynes to see our beloved team play. It was the last match of the season and the many Orient fans, filling blocks 26 to 38, were in a carnival mood. We were already sure of a play-off spot, but a victory against the Dons would see us finishing in third place and thus drawing the weakest opponents in the play offs. Sure enough, we ran roundabout-like rings around those concrete cows and won 3-1. We saw off Peterborough in the play-offs and headed off to Wembley for the play-off final against Rotherham.
On the day of the play-off final, it looked as if everything was going our way. By half-time we were two-nil up, our players were on top form and it felt like it was going to be the best day of our lives. In the second half, Rotherham's Alex Revell - an ex-Orient player that we sold to Rotherham in 2011 - sank two brilliant goals against us and we went on to lose on penalties. I have never seen so many grown adults in tears.
I later mused that the Orient play-off final of 2014 was a general metaphor for life, so much so that the title of my livejournal is now "Two Nil Up at Half Time". Just when you think you have it in the bag, someone comes along and gets you where it hurts most and in the time it takes to kick a ball all your dreams turn to dust.
And that, of course, wasn't the end of the story. If this were a book, Orient would pick themselves up, dust themselves down and fight back, gaining automatic promotion at the end of the season. But in real life, when things are bad they usually get worse. When someone is lying on the ground it is the ideal opportunity to kick them in the head.
A few weeks after the play-off final, the owner Barry Hearn sold Leyton Orient Football Club to an Italian billionnaire named Francesco Becchetti. Hearn assured us that Becchetti wanted to make Orient a great club and was committed to working with the existing staff, players and fans to take us to the dizzy heights of the Championship.
What Becchetti actually did was sack our beloved manager, Big Russ, sell one of our best players to one of our biggest rivals, oust most of the staff and give jobs to his mates, irrespective of whether they were any good at doing whatever they were employed to do, or whether they could speak a word of English. Two new Italian players were brought in (including Andrea Dossena, best known for being caught shoplifting Parma Ham in Harrods) and paid far more than they were worth, and crucially, more than the existing players, who accordingly got the right hump. Then, as if this wasn't bad enough, he turned the club into a laughing stock on primetime Italian tv, on a reality show where Italian youngsters compete for a pro contract with the club by way of singing "Best Day of my Life" whilst running backwards through the club bar and stands and flirting with scantily clad models. (You really need to watch those links, they are beyond belief.) Oh, and we signed someone whose brother is in The Only Way Is Essex and is shagging that fit bird who used to be in Corrie, thus making us proper fodder for Heat magazine. Basically, Becchetti doesn't give a fuck about football and he has no idea who Leyton Orient even are. He just thought that a football club was a good thing for a billionnaire to buy with his loose change and have a bit of fun with. Never mind over a hundred years of history, loyal fans who trudge to horrible grounds with poisonous hotdogs in treacherous weather conditions and players whose are pinning their careers on and working hard for this club. Suddenly we're all just an enormous joke and people thousands of miles away who had never heard of us a year ago are laughing at us in a language we don't even understand.
Strangely enough, Orient started to lose games. Those players that fought to get us to Wembley last season suddenly resembled something between headless chickens and knackered carthorses, running in circles for half an hour and then falling to the floor exhausted. Who'd have thought it? People don't perform well when they have the hump! I have known in my heart for some time that the only fitting end to this season will be relegation to League 2, and this outcome is all but certain after this weekend's trip to Milton Keynes. In eleven years of attending Orient games, at 6-1 it was the worst defeat I've ever witnessed. I can't say anything positive about our performance at all. Basically, no one could be arsed to kick the ball, on a couple of occasions it seemed to just end up in our net because that was the path of least resistance, and even the MK Dons players started to look a bit bored. The Orient fans, who occupied blocks 34 to 38, a third of last year's attendance, started getting up and walking out after the fourth goal, ten minutes before half time. By the time the match finished there were only a few left, and they were mainly people who had got squiffy on Concrete Cow Pail Ale at the bar and wanted to scream abuse at the manager. (Not much point in that, I thought, he won't understand unless you do it in Italian.)
There are now three matches left at until the end of the season, and the fans have their calculators out and it's all about if Crewe do this and Crawley do that and we pull one off against Sheffield - but let's face it, relegation is what befits this lousy season, and until we get Leyton Orient back in the hands of someone who cares about football and small third division London clubs, we're as stuffed as a calzone.
On the day of the play-off final, it looked as if everything was going our way. By half-time we were two-nil up, our players were on top form and it felt like it was going to be the best day of our lives. In the second half, Rotherham's Alex Revell - an ex-Orient player that we sold to Rotherham in 2011 - sank two brilliant goals against us and we went on to lose on penalties. I have never seen so many grown adults in tears.
I later mused that the Orient play-off final of 2014 was a general metaphor for life, so much so that the title of my livejournal is now "Two Nil Up at Half Time". Just when you think you have it in the bag, someone comes along and gets you where it hurts most and in the time it takes to kick a ball all your dreams turn to dust.
And that, of course, wasn't the end of the story. If this were a book, Orient would pick themselves up, dust themselves down and fight back, gaining automatic promotion at the end of the season. But in real life, when things are bad they usually get worse. When someone is lying on the ground it is the ideal opportunity to kick them in the head.
A few weeks after the play-off final, the owner Barry Hearn sold Leyton Orient Football Club to an Italian billionnaire named Francesco Becchetti. Hearn assured us that Becchetti wanted to make Orient a great club and was committed to working with the existing staff, players and fans to take us to the dizzy heights of the Championship.
What Becchetti actually did was sack our beloved manager, Big Russ, sell one of our best players to one of our biggest rivals, oust most of the staff and give jobs to his mates, irrespective of whether they were any good at doing whatever they were employed to do, or whether they could speak a word of English. Two new Italian players were brought in (including Andrea Dossena, best known for being caught shoplifting Parma Ham in Harrods) and paid far more than they were worth, and crucially, more than the existing players, who accordingly got the right hump. Then, as if this wasn't bad enough, he turned the club into a laughing stock on primetime Italian tv, on a reality show where Italian youngsters compete for a pro contract with the club by way of singing "Best Day of my Life" whilst running backwards through the club bar and stands and flirting with scantily clad models. (You really need to watch those links, they are beyond belief.) Oh, and we signed someone whose brother is in The Only Way Is Essex and is shagging that fit bird who used to be in Corrie, thus making us proper fodder for Heat magazine. Basically, Becchetti doesn't give a fuck about football and he has no idea who Leyton Orient even are. He just thought that a football club was a good thing for a billionnaire to buy with his loose change and have a bit of fun with. Never mind over a hundred years of history, loyal fans who trudge to horrible grounds with poisonous hotdogs in treacherous weather conditions and players whose are pinning their careers on and working hard for this club. Suddenly we're all just an enormous joke and people thousands of miles away who had never heard of us a year ago are laughing at us in a language we don't even understand.
Strangely enough, Orient started to lose games. Those players that fought to get us to Wembley last season suddenly resembled something between headless chickens and knackered carthorses, running in circles for half an hour and then falling to the floor exhausted. Who'd have thought it? People don't perform well when they have the hump! I have known in my heart for some time that the only fitting end to this season will be relegation to League 2, and this outcome is all but certain after this weekend's trip to Milton Keynes. In eleven years of attending Orient games, at 6-1 it was the worst defeat I've ever witnessed. I can't say anything positive about our performance at all. Basically, no one could be arsed to kick the ball, on a couple of occasions it seemed to just end up in our net because that was the path of least resistance, and even the MK Dons players started to look a bit bored. The Orient fans, who occupied blocks 34 to 38, a third of last year's attendance, started getting up and walking out after the fourth goal, ten minutes before half time. By the time the match finished there were only a few left, and they were mainly people who had got squiffy on Concrete Cow Pail Ale at the bar and wanted to scream abuse at the manager. (Not much point in that, I thought, he won't understand unless you do it in Italian.)
There are now three matches left at until the end of the season, and the fans have their calculators out and it's all about if Crewe do this and Crawley do that and we pull one off against Sheffield - but let's face it, relegation is what befits this lousy season, and until we get Leyton Orient back in the hands of someone who cares about football and small third division London clubs, we're as stuffed as a calzone.
