Richie Wellens understands the value of learning from his mistakes. When Leyton Orient’s new manager was approached to take over at Brisbane Road in March, the conversations with the board were about first keeping the relegation-threatened club in the Football League. But close attention was paid too to what would come after. Planning and the freedom to plan in football management, Wellens knows from experience, can be all that stand between smooth sailing and high-profile disaster.
The former Manchester United player hasn’t always had such obliging employers. In March 2021, he was sacked by Salford City after just four months and 25 League Two games. The decision was taken by his old United team-mate, Gary Neville, who has himself been a vocal proponent of giving managers time to succeed, and has warned of the damage caused to the football ecosystem by hasty, impetuous dismissals.
Just 11 days earlier, Wellens had guided Salford to victory in the Football League Trophy final against Portsmouth at Wembley, a game he now concedes he used as “a shop window” to advertise himself for his next job, so disillusioned had he become with life at Moor Lane. That next role turned out to be Doncaster Rovers, where again things didn’t work out and he departed in December last year.
That ultimately led the way to Orient, where things have gone rather better. Four wins in eight have dragged the O’s away from the League Two relegation zone and all but secured their place in the division next season. That planning that was discussed when he took the job can now start in earnest, as the 42-year-old begins plotting a way out of the division he won as manager of Swindon Town in 2020.
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As for making the same mistake twice, he has seen enough in his short managerial career to be wary of red flags when they arise.
“You don’t get to make a long-term plan if you don’t first deal with the short-term,” Wellens tells i. “At Salford I wasn’t given any time at all [to implement a style]. I was working with a previous manager’s players, used to a totally different style to what I have.”
The move was never a good fit. He was hired in November 2020 following the sacking of Graham Alexander, though he concedes to not having been entirely led by factors relating to football. Once in place, things started promisingly. There were five wins in his first nine games as the team leapt from midtable into the play-off places by Christmas. When they beat Barrow 1-0 at home in February, they went fourth. Then came that famous day at Wembley, and victory on penalties in the delayed 2020 Football League Trophy final. If things were falling apart, Wellens and the club were doing a job of keeping up appearances.
But behind the scenes, things were indeed at breaking point.
“The decision to go to Salford was not a professional one,” Wellens says. “We were in [Covid] lockdown, I had a family back up in Manchester where we were going through our own problems. The move was for the wrong reasons.
“We were getting 13,000 at Swindon regularly. I had the club just where I wanted it to be, it was my baby. I loved it. Then at Salford, it was ‘let’s just win this week’, no plan about how we would try and win.
“Did I enjoy working there? No. I have certain standards, certain disciplines I think need to be in place in a football club, things any manager will tell you they need. I didn’t think they had them at Salford. When I was working in that kind of environment, I couldn’t enjoy it.
“I worked with a wonderful chairman, Lee Power, at Swindon. He let me run the football club, every decision was by me. It was all done with clarity and decisiveness. I was allowed to go with my gut.
“Then I walked into a situation where Gary Neville was the chairman with the Class of ’92 behind him. I didn’t handle that situation as best I could. Did I make mistakes? Absolutely. Could I have handled Gary differently and had better lines of communication? We could both have done.
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How Salford City and the Class of ‘92 altered perceptions in this ‘dirty old town’21 December, 2018“I want a good relationship with my chairman. I want to be able to talk to him about football over a coffee or a pint. What I don’t want is conversations that are meaningless and just for the sake of a conversation. Topics being brought up that shouldn’t have been in my remit.”
Wellens’ life and career have since been turned around. He enjoys the environment of Leyton Orient, where he is finally being given the space he feels he needs to model a team in his image.
The manager is a proponent of the increasingly technical possession-based football which is quickly becoming the norm in the Football League, replacing the more direct style that dominated during his days as a journeyman in the league.
“Clubs that have a style of football that is attractive can be built upon, can go to the next level and find it easier to adapt,” he says of his plan to get the O’s playing. “If you go to the next level and don’t just play long ball, your players will read the game better. If you rely on just being quicker or stronger, you’ll come straight back down.
“If you pass a ball five yards it’ll be about a hundred percent success rate. If you pass it 20 yards, that goes down to about 85 percent. Keep lumping it 60 yards, that percentage comes significantly down. Passing the ball limits risk. But I’m not here to criticise other managers.”
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