17 September 2016

Leyton Orient 0 Yeovil Town 1, 17/9/16

A game which... was so soul-destroyingly predictable that Francesco Becchetti might as well have given the squad a day off and instead broadcast a big-screen replay of one of the countless other insipid home defeats of his tenure. In fact, that is the sort of mental thing he might actually do.

Thing is, despite today's evidence to the contrary, the current squad does consist of decent players, but the lack of any discernible team spirit, determination, morale or collective responsibility is surely symptomatic of the toxic culture that now prevails at our once beloved club. Still, on the bright side, we're still five points clear of the relegation zone.

Jump off your seat moment... Didn't we get a corner at some point? In the context of the rest of the game we really should have celebrated that with champagne, a conga down the aisles, a victory bus tour through the streets of Leyton and a Roman orgy. What actually happened was that whoever took it - seriously, you expect me to remember who it was? - smashed it straight into the first defender. Probably. Whatever.

We won a corner! Celebrate! 
Give that man a medal... Poor Jay Simpson. Surely the only thing worse than being frozen out of this team is actually having to play in this team, and so it was that the striker came on with 25 minutes to go. Lively he was too, albeit only in the sense that a three-toed sloth might be described as lively in comparison to 10 blocks of concrete.

Taxi for... Francesco Becchetti for airily wafting away the complaints of fans from his gallery standpoint as if he was a Roman emperor dismissively ordering the lions be set upon the bunch of fucking peasants he no doubt believes us to be. Come to think of it, don't discount the possibility that he might actually bring lions to Brisbane Road, for that would make about as much logical sense as sacking Dean Cox. Or signing Gianvito Plasmati. Or buying the club in the first place.


In the dug out... What, you may ask yourself, is Andy Hessenthaler – probably a decent enough bloke – doing here in the current circumstances? Well, one thing he's not doing is instructing his team to do anything other than lump the ball towards Jordan Bowery / Paul McCallum / Ollie Palmer and hope for the best. Anyway, it's a moot point for I suspect one or two more defeats will spell the end of his short tenure and Francesco Becchetti will finally cut out the middle man and simply appoint himself as manager.

Meanwhile in the press...  Ben Chorley this week waded into the Orient controversy with the same type of reckless abandon with which he'd regularly decimate lower league strikers. "I think Orient could be in League Two for a few years yet," he said with so much optimism that we'll somehow avoid relegation to the conference that I can only assume he'd just drunk two pints of MDMA. He continued: "It's a great club. Everything around it is good, but the problem is the owner." Oh really, Ben? We thought it was all Leon McSweeney's fault...