24 October 2012

Leyton Orient 0 Colchester United 2, 23/10/12


A game in which... Orient were so limp that had Colchester United decided to field a team of 11 soggy lettuces then the home side would still have set out to do nothing more than 'stay in the game' and 'hope to nick one'. Yes, this was another soul-destroyingly ineffective performance at Brisbane Road or - to put it more technically - by Christ we are shit.

To put it in perspective, if we ignore the aberration that was the Yeovil result, Orient have scored two goals at home in 540 minutes of league football - or one goal every three games. We lucked out against Brentford, nearly didn't beat an abysmal Hartlepool side... and apart from that the football at Brisbane Road has been about as appetising as a vegetarian picnic served up on the floor of an abattoir. 

Moment of magic... Predictably enough a weaving run from Moses Odubajo, this one in the second half that led to the keeper spilling the young winger's shot and Scott Wagstaff sticking the ball in the net - albeit from an offside position. Moses did his best tonight, but would probably rather spend 40 days and 40 nights stuck on top of Mount Sinai than try to save this team from what's looking like inevitable relegation. 

Moment of madness... It's easy to knock David Mooney - give it a go, it kills a few minutes - but the current woes of Orient are hardly his fault alone and he actually looked fairly lively when he came on. Nonetheless, it was with grinding predictability that the Irishman fluffed his big chance when Lee Cook plopped the ball on his head on the six-yard line with the goal gaping. 

Knight in shining armour... Martin Rowlands, a footballer whose intelligence is so wasted on his team mates it's like watching a Nobel Prize-winning physicist trying to explain the theory of relativity to a classroom full of drunken baboons. And Jimmy Smith. 

Pantomime horse... Gary Sawyer - not so much for his defending but for his set pieces. Indeed, so poor was his delivery that were he a midwife he'd be looking bemusedly at a woman in labour before announcing "Hey, let's use these rusty shears and some WD-40 to get the little fella out!"  

In the dug out... "There are just one or two things not going our way at the moment," said Russell Slade after the game. Which is true, in the sense that there were 'just one or two' things wrong with the safety procedures at Chernobyl. 

Meanwhile on Twitter... "Lovely reception back where it all began," tweeted Orient legend Jabo Ibehre after the game. "thank you very much it was nice to see old friends and familiar faces  :) up the o's!!!" Erm, any chance you could come back Jabo? We promise you won't make you play with Carl Hutchings again. 

Statto corner... Tonight Orient had just 28% of possession, the second-lowest at Brisbane Road ever. The only time the team had less of the ball was in a match against Millwall in 2008 when Martin Ling instructed his team to "pass it to Sean Thornton at every available opportunity", only to realise after 85 minutes that he'd actually sent the Irish midfielder on loan to Shrewsbury as a punishment for outrunning Paul Terry in training, despite having drunk 11 pints of Guinness. 
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