In each of their last two promotion seasons, Leyton Orient have started like a runaway train. During their National League title win in 2019, they were unbeaten during their first 13 league matches.
This season, with the champions champagne on ice but the promotion party very much underway, Leyton Orient won eight of their first nine matches.
It wasn’t always that way, they’ll tell you in Leyton. Nine years ago, Orient suffered – or self-inflicted – two of the more remarkable collapses in recent Football League history.
In late September 2013, they won their eighth straight match at the start of the season to go five points clear at the top of League One and then motored on from there. But by May they were limping, winning only three of their last 10 games and falling down into third place.
If the play-offs offered potential instant redemption, forget it. Leyton Orient instead repeated the trick, 2-0 up against Rotherham with 35 minutes to go before losing on penalties.
Then the quick decline that can so often follow galling missed opportunity: third place followed by relegation, two seasons spent in the bottom tier before they fell through its trapdoor.
Supporters began to wonder whether a fall even existed for them to hit with a hard bump and bruised souls. Just under five years ago, after a 0-0 draw at Eastleigh, Orient were 17th in the National League, directly behind Halifax Town and Maidstone United.
There can be few clubs in English football who have endured and then enjoyed a more rollercoaster last decade than Orient. We have grown accustomed to the sad decline of provincial sides at the hands of those who don’t seem to care enough, or are guilty of caring too much to delegate to those with more expertise, that it’s worth shouting from the rooftops when one returns.
It is forever tempting, when explaining these great falls and rise, to resort to romantic epithets. Look upon this journey as an outsider and Leyton Orient appear as a club destined to be locked in vicious or victorious cycles, unable to escape the former and never wanting the latter to end.
Maybe it’s all an inherent response to the generation that preceded it; for all Barry Hearn’s personality as owner, for 24 years from 1989 onwards Orient were promoted and relegated just once.
But it’s just not true – reality rushes in to fill the inevitable holes in the story that romance leaves. If Leyton Orient’s destiny for worse and better has been fated, it is because clubs and communities of their size are forever at the whims of their owners. Orient fans know more than most about those nights you spend praying that the omnipotent presence knows what they’re doing.
The fall started not with play-off collapse, but an Italian businessman with a penchant for sacking managers. Francesco Becchetti got through four in 2014-15 (when Leyton Orient were relegated to League Two) and went one better/worse in 2016-17 when they tumbled out of the Football League after a 112-year stay.
Such was the ill feeling towards Becchetti by the end – players paid late, winding-up hearings, general farce – that supporters forced the abandonment of their final fixture of the season. Orient’s final minutes as a league club were played out in front of a deafening behind-closed-doors silence.
Out of grim hopelessness, recovery was born. With a High Court ruling instructing Becchetti that he must pay off the club debts or sell, a happy coincidence brought significant investment. Nigel Travis is an Orient supporter who was chief executive of Dunkin’ Donuts when he met Kent Teague, a Texan multimillionaire, senior Microsoft director and winner of the prestigious “most American name” award. Teague wanted to invest in a club and Travis had his perfect option.
If Teague has provided some money, this is no mega project. The wins, off the pitch at least, have come largely through his determination to be a presence at Brisbane Road and prove to supporters that their community is worth preserving above all else.
Teague understands that American investors can arrive accompanied by stereotypical baggage; he is keen to prove that he is one of the good guys. Coming after Becchetti has its benefits.
Richie Wellens deserves as much praise for this remarkable league campaign, far above any preseason expectation. His strategy is simple: Orient have scored only 56 goals in 42 league games, have won once by more than a two-goal margin and their top scorer has only managed 10 goals.
They also have 23 clean sheets and one more will be enough to secure a second league title in five years. The recovery is not just complete; Orient have slayed the demons of 2014.
And yet, for all this talk of owners and sensible decisions and pragmatic managers, romance counter-punches. We cannot overlook the emotional heft of this club’s re-rise. On Tuesday night at Gillingham, when promotion was secured, Charlie Edinburgh was there to watch and the travelling throng chanted his name. It was Charlie’s father Justin who took Orient back into the Football League in May 2019. A month later, Justin suffered a cardiac arrest and tragically passed away.
It is too much to say that this is all for Edinburgh; a football club continues on and on and on. It is too much to say that Edinburgh’s passing has fuelled the journey, because hard work, strategic planning and good management have clearly made all the difference. To overlook any of that would be to do a disservice to Wellens, his staff, his players and those who took on this club at its lowest ebb.
But at Orient, to work out where you want to go is to reflect upon where you have come from. Charlie Edinburgh appreciates the love of supporters who help cherish the memory of his Dad. Travis and Teague have spoken eloquently of Richie Wellens continuing Edinburgh’s work.
This is a club that is finally committed to being the best version of itself. Let’s just say that the memories of those sadly lost can help pull that vision into focus.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/HSBA0ow
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