06 April 2015

Leyton Orient 3 Gillingham 3, 6/4/15

A game which... began with Andrea Dossena embarking on a crazed kamikaze mission to single-handedly relegate Orient; continued with a heroic last stand by Alex Cisak; and ended with a late Darius Henderson-inspired rally to rescue an unlikely point.

Thing is though, Orient shouldn't have to be rescuing a point at home to an average side like Gillingham but yet again our statuesque defending and wastefulness on the ball was our undoing. Sure, in the last 20 minutes we built up a head of steam – much as you would if you tried to heat up a swimming pool with a box of matches – but last-ditch fight-backs may not be enough to save Orient from relegation if we continue to be this sloppy at the back.

Josh Wright celebrates his goal 
Jump off your seat moment... Another game, another vital goal for The Only Way Is Essex reject Josh "Mark's brother" Wright. And boy did he celebrate – whooping and gesticulating like a hormonal teenager at his first Marbella boat party. Good work Josh!

Give that man a medal... Alex Cisak has impressed since coming in on loan from Burnley and appears to have given the Orient defence so much confidence that they are happy to stand around letting opposition players shoot freely at him for 90 consecutive minutes. The big Aussie must feel like he's ventured into the searing heat of the Outback with just four warm cans of Fosters for all the use his back line is, but today he was Jakupovic-esque and pulled off a series of crucial saves.

Andrea Dossena: Casual 
Taxi for... Andrea Dossena. The guy's clearly got class but the way he defends is so casual he might as well take to the pitch fully decked out in Stone Island clobber. With Gary Sawyer out for the rest of the season the Italian is going to have to start earning his dosh – fast. And when I say "fast" I mean "slightly quicker than ambling disinterestedly back towards the penalty area", which would be an improvement on today.

"Fuck the technical shit"... Now, it's easy to criticise team selection with the benefit of hindsight... so that's exactly what I'm going to do. Number one: after a battling clean sheet against Coventry, why drop Nathan Clarke for an out-of-match-practice Shane Lowry? Number two: Why rush Lloyd James back into the side when other options – Taylor? Bartley? Hell, even Pritchard (just kidding) – were available? Number three: Why leave McAnuff on the bench when he's been our most in-form winger of the last couple of months? Liverani still hasn't sorted out our defending of set pieces either. Apart from all that, love the guy!


Meanwhile on Twitter... "After setting off at the same time I did last week I'm an hour and fifteen minutes early" tweeted a clearly bewildered Darius Henderson before the game, almost as if he had never before encountered the phenomenon of external factors influencing the outcome of events. Next week: Darius becomes overheated and agitated while wearing a thick winter's coat on a sunny April day. "I didn't have this problem when I wore it in December," he tweets, highly confused.