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Leyton Orient (the decline of)



edna krabappel

Well-known member
NSC Patreon
Jul 7, 2003
47,228
Read this (excellent) article last week re the decline & fall of Leyton Orient. I must admit, until I read it, I'd no idea they'd fallen as low as they have: they're currently 91st in the Football League, three points adrift of Hartlepool, the side immediately above the drop.

Didn't have much time for them back in the late 1990s/ early 2000s for obvious reasons. Barry Hearn demanding we be deducted points, Carl Griffiths, and- naturally- Scott McGleish. But the guy who owns them now seems to be an absolute basket case. Got done for kicking one of his own managers last season, has gone through a vast array of different managers in the last couple of years, has sold all their best players (including screwing Dean Cox over, plus their top scorer left for Philadelphia Union in January), and is seemingly grinding them down into the dust. Barry Hearn's company still own the stadium, which can't be ideal. As if things couldn't get any worse, they've just appointed as their latest manager ex-Albion waste-of-a-shirt Danny Webb :ohmy:

I actually feel quite sorry for their fans, looking at the current situation.



https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...ton-orient-spiteful-owner-frnacesco-becchetti

This has been quite the season for crisis clubs. The Premier League title race may be a foregone conclusion but the battle for the “honour” of most mismanaged club in England could go right to the wire. Charlton, Coventry, Blackburn, Blackpool and Morecambe have endured campaigns pockmarked by protest and off-field chaos but surely none can match the meltdown at Leyton Orient, who look destined for relegation to the non-league ranks after 112 years of Football League membership. And it is looking less like a relegation through misjudgment or penury, but by an owner’s spite.

Orient have yet to pick up a point in 2017 and lost their sixth match in a row on Tuesday, 1-0 to Morecambe, under their fourth manager of the season, Danny Webb, in his second game in charge. Their starting XI included two teenage strikers, Sam Dalby and Victor Adeboyejo, with a combined total of four previous league starts behind them – and a youth-team goalkeeper, Sam Sargeant, promoted because the first choice, Alex Cisak, was strangely not selected.

Cisak had been one of six players transfer-listed at the start of January and already his exclusion carries echoes of the way in which experienced and well-regarded players such as Dean Cox and Jay Simpson were forced out of the club earlier in the season. This young Orient side fought hard but, shorn of resources under a rookie manager, are running on empty.

This is the latest phase in the calamitous ownership of the club by the Italian waste-management magnate Francesco Becchetti, whose two-and-a-half-year reign has featured one expensively funded relegation, an unsuccessful reality TV show, a failed attempted extradition of the owner to Albania as part of a fraud and money‑laundering investigation (he said it was politically motivated), a six-match ban for Becchetti for kicking his then assistant manager Andy Hessenthaler, 10 managers, persistent reports of meddling in team affairs, a chaotic player-recruitment policy and a general sense that no one senior at the club has the first idea of how to run it.

Now we are on the neglect phase. Since a cautious and peaceful joint protest with Blackpool fans against bad ownership before the match between the clubs in November, Becchetti has not shown up for a game and refused to sanction any squad additions (having taken over in 2014 amid a blaze of expensive, ill-advised signings).

Last month the club issued a bizarre and insulting statement on their website, from the chief executive, Alessandro Angelieri, implying the protest was the reason Becchetti is no longer attending matches. The statement also criticised individual players and made the staggering assertion that when Becchetti took over, “a squad without future was inherited”. This future-less squad had just secured Orient’s highest league placing for 32 years, missing promotion to the Championship in 2014 in a Wembley shootout defeat by Rotherham United. Angelieri’s broadside signed off with the claim that Becchetti’s presence was missed by the players. “Mr Becchetti has a great charisma and the players definitely feel his absence,” he said.

Even allowing for English not being Angelieri’s first language, this took Orient fans through the looking glass, if they were not there already. It did, however, hold out a sniff of the one hope supporters now have: that Becchetti might be persuaded to part with his plaything, now he was throwing it out of his pram.

The problem is Leyton Orient are no longer a very sellable club. Becchetti has loaded it with debt – around £9m–£10m, to the holding company owned by him and his mother, Liliana Condomiti, which is assumed to be funded by other family companies – and appears to be holding out for a sale price in that region.

Fans’ responses have ranged from rage to resignation, despair to working to find an alternative, viable future. The Leyton Orient Fans’ Trust (LOFT), of which I am vice-chair, is developing a recovery plan to deal with crisis scenarios, and seeking out sources of investment. It is holding a special general meeting on 2 March to endorse, among other things, the launch of a fighting fund to meet certain contingencies. There is an almost universal view the club has no future under Becchetti; indeed, London’s second-oldest professional club is in peril.

It is unlikely Becchetti will attend another Orient match. Those fans who do are trying hard to rally the team, who in recent games have been doing their best but look ill-equipped to win the battle against relegation. LOFT and other interested parties are working behind the scenes to find a sustainable future off it.

So until a rescue plan comes to fruition, a 136-year-old club continues to be driven into the ground, the football authorities unable or unwilling to act against an owner so palpably unfit to run a club. Somehow, we must hope our team can overcome the obstacles so spitefully thrown in their way from within, starting at Yeovil on Saturday, and retain our league place. But the odds are lengthening all the time.
 




DavidRyder

Well-known member
Jul 23, 2013
2,884
I work with an Orient fan, every Monday he seems filled with gloom. Confident they are doomed as they are playing so badly.

Have memories of Ricky Otto getting a hat-trick at the Goldstone for them.
 




Cowfold Seagull

Fan of the 17 bus
Apr 22, 2009
21,578
Cowfold
Sad. Great rivals for many years, and we had some good battles against them. Will always remember that incredible 4-4 draw at the Goldstone in our final season, when we were in a similar situation to the one that they are facing now.
 








edna krabappel

Well-known member
NSC Patreon
Jul 7, 2003
47,228

Wow. Trump-esque in its chicanery and level of delusion.

I wouldn't wish relegation to non-league on any club, but there's probably a few I'd prefer to see go down before the Os. I kind of admire fans who support a team who live in the shadow of much larger clubs, and they're definitely one of those (see also Rochdale, Bury, Oldham, Walsall, Tranmere etc). It would be easy to live in East London and go to West Ham or Spurs. To follow Orient, for example, takes a certain amount of dedication, as well as a thick skin.
 




studio150

Well-known member
Jul 30, 2011
29,555
On the Border
Should really have been permitted to transfer to the Olympic Stadium which would have added funding to the club.
However they now seen destined to go out of the league and can see them following the route taken by Chester and others.
Always enjoyed going to Orient even if the results werent always favourable.
 


SUA Seagull

Well-known member
Jul 23, 2016
408
Stratford-upon-Avon
I was born and raised a couple of miles from Orient and often used to watch them as a lad. Many of their fans were local grandads (whose kids and grandkids had opted to follow the more fashionable Spurs, Arsenal and West Ham) and who stood alongside generations of East Enders on the terraces at Brisbane Road. We all liked “plucky little Orient” in those days (1960s) and I saw more of them than I did the Albion in those early years, so it really pains me to see their fall from grace, and their similarities with us when we were propping up the rest of the league too. But there the parallels end. There will be no Tony Bloom coming to the rescue and one cannot help feel that Orient, having suffered prolonged, appalling mismanagement, risks slipping into the Conference from which it will find it tough to escape. It is a tragic story and just reinforces to me how lucky we are at Brighton. I will always have a soft spot for their fans, who have stuck by them despite all that’s been heaped upon them.
 


Martlet

Well-known member
Jul 15, 2003
679
20 years on from Fans United, let's never forget.

I've always had a soft spot for Orient, if not Macgleish (IAW, IAW) , would hate to see them out of the game. Interested to see Hearn's reaction to all of this as well - he's the one who separated the ground from the club, whatever the reasons at the time. Interested to see what their articles of association say...
 




edna krabappel

Well-known member
NSC Patreon
Jul 7, 2003
47,228
Funny how all the money in English football has attracted so many overseas "investors" (I use that term loosely in some cases). It's clear that our country's teams are often viewed by outsiders looking in as an easy way to get rich, ignoring the fact that most clubs, certainly in the Football League, make a loss every month. I can't see any other reason why a bunch of Italians would, with the greatest of respect, be interested in a club like Leyton Orient.

Notts County had that bizarre overseas consortium buy them at one stage, with disastrous consequences, Blackpool were owned for a time by a Latvian guy, you've got Demin ploughing his honestly earned money into Bournemouth when they were in the FL. Charlton's Belgian owners, Derby have American owners now, Forest fans are trying to get rid of Fawaz (the Kuwaiti guy), Cardiff have had all manner of issues with Vincent Tan, then there's the infamous Venkys at Blackburn: no doubt there are plenty more.

Does this ever end well? I suppose Bournemouth will argue that it has done for them, but I'm still convinced that something dodgy will come out of that particular situation in the end, and it may well all come crashing down around them.
 


bhanutz

Well-known member
Aug 23, 2005
5,998
Funny how all the money in English football has attracted so many overseas "investors" (I use that term loosely in some cases). It's clear that our country's teams are often viewed by outsiders looking in as an easy way to get rich, ignoring the fact that most clubs, certainly in the Football League, make a loss every month. I can't see any other reason why a bunch of Italians would, with the greatest of respect, be interested in a club like Leyton Orient.

Notts County had that bizarre overseas consortium buy them at one stage, with disastrous consequences, Blackpool were owned for a time by a Latvian guy, you've got Demin ploughing his honestly earned money into Bournemouth when they were in the FL. Charlton's Belgian owners, Derby have American owners now, Forest fans are trying to get rid of Fawaz (the Kuwaiti guy), Cardiff have had all manner of issues with Vincent Tan, then there's the infamous Venkys at Blackburn: no doubt there are plenty more.

Does this ever end well? I suppose Bournemouth will argue that it has done for them, but I'm still convinced that something dodgy will come out of that particular situation in the end, and it may well all come crashing down around them.

You missed out MASSIVE! Half these owners would never have known about any of these clubs 5 years or so ago....Makes it even sweeter that we have a lifelong supporter in charge of us!
 


Dolph Ins

Well-known member
May 26, 2014
1,525
Mid Sussex
One of my favorite awaydays back in the Withdean era. Good luck Orient, I hope you can get through this.

Oh yes and Scott McGleish is a wanker!
 




Paris

Well-known member
Jul 17, 2010
4,068
13th district
Was only a few seasons ago that they reached the league one play off final. 2-0 up via one from Cox under the leadership of Slade and heading for the Championship. Revell and Rotherham came back and the rest is history. Amazing how things turn around so quickly in Football. Leicester are a more recent example of this.
 


edna krabappel

Well-known member
NSC Patreon
Jul 7, 2003
47,228
You missed out MASSIVE! Half these owners would never have known about any of these clubs 5 years or so ago....Makes it even sweeter that we have a lifelong supporter in charge of us!

Of course, The Massive (again, they would argue that particular deal has been a relative success so far, but I imagine Mr Chansiri would soon get twitchy if things didn't continue to progress).

Wolves are owned by Chinese investors, Reading by the Thais still (for now), Birmingham are still in the clutches of Carson Yeung's people, Villa by Tony Xia, QPR by Fernandes & Mittal, the infamous Cellino at Leeds, and Shahid Khan at Fulham. Not many of our teams now owned by fans, or at least the local-guy-made-good sorts.
 


Surrey_Albion

New member
Jan 17, 2011
2,867
Horley
We aren't playing when they're away to Crawley so think I might go in the away end with them that day,fancy a protest
 






dejavuatbtn

Well-known member
Aug 4, 2010
7,128
Henfield
They have a history that goes well beyond ours and I always find it sad when one of our older clubs fall down the leagues into oblivion. Sad that the riches of football are not shared out more fairly - I hate the premier league, and hate the FA as much for allowing all this s**t to happen without a fight.
 


dejavuatbtn

Well-known member
Aug 4, 2010
7,128
Henfield
We aren't playing when they're away to Crawley so think I might go in the away end with them that day,fancy a protest

I think we owe a lot to the fans of clubs like Orient. Not sure how many protests we have supported in the intervening years but a trip to Crawley isn't like going to the other side of the world.
 



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