Leyton Orient 2 Bradford City 0, 28/8/21

A game in which... Jacketball returned to E10! What is "Jacketball" you may ask, other than the term used by the official club Twitter feed whenever they stumble across a clip that features Orient completing more than two consecutive passes? Well, on this evidence it seems Jacketball is the new tactical innovation of lumping the ball towards a big striker and hoping for the best. And before you scoff, you think that's easy? Well a) it didn't work against Harrogate. And b) this was a performance full of energy, bite and control. A joy to watch. 

Moment of madness... Ruel Sotiriou's goal and the scenes of absolute shithousery that followed. The strike itself was a geometric marvel – blasted in from an angle so acute that today mathematicians across the world are frantically trying to rewrite the rules of trigonometry. The striker then ran the full width of the pitch to knee-slide in front of the away fans, a handful of whom had booed the South Stand's Justin Edinburgh chant. Watch this clip closely and you'll see a couple of Poundland Tony Montanas from the Bradford faithful swagger to the front to voice their displeasure and throw lighters... And kudos to Harry Smith for sparking up the fag he keeps slipped into his sock with one them.

Praise be... Difficult one because every Orient player was a titan today, but let's firstly talk about Hector Kyprianou who controlled the midfield today with rangy brilliance – like a Matthew Spring who can pass forward, perhaps, or a Jimmy Smith with a brain. And to Shadrach Ogie who until five minutes before the game was looking forward to 90 minutes of sitting on the bench picking his nose and surreptitiously checking TikTok on his phone. But he then put in a defensive performance so intimidating that the people of Bradford – from Gareth Gates to Kimberley from Girls Aloud – will be having nightmares for years to come. 

Let's talk about... Harry Smith. Only Leyton Orient could sign a 6ft 7in forward who can't actually head the ball. And remember, Martin Ling had actually been searching for a "big striker" since the summer of 2008 when the then manager tried to convince us that 5ft 11in Ryan Jarvis could do the job. Smith, then, doesn't so much have a head like a 50p piece, but a head like thousands of 50p pieces welded together into a jagged globe by a radical artist with the express purpose of illustrating the concept of "chaos". Or "shame" – as when he somehow managed to ricochet an absolute sitter onto the crossbar from six yards. That said, Smith's now scored two goals in three games, so I'm all for the non-heading lummock. 

In the dug out... It's taken only six games, but after the catastrophic defeat by Harrogate Town manager Kenny Jackett has reverted to the well-worn and archaic Orient formation of 4-4-2 with a central midfielder on the right wing, in this case Craig Clay. This, of course, is a ploy used by countless previous Os managers such as Russell Slade (with Jimmy Smith on the right); Fabio Liverani (Bradley Pritchard); and of course Alberto Cavasin, who somehow played Ada the kit man in that spot for one game after his pre-match instructions were lost in translation.  

Dove sono adesso? Or "Where are they now?" in English, a new series in which I investigate the whereabouts of some of the key figures from the Becchetti era. First up: translator/goalkeeping coach/head of recruitment Rob Gagliardi who, given his searing Italian good looks, you would assume had moved into a career in either catalogue modelling or porn, right? Wrong: Rob is currently Head of European Scouting at actual football club Portsmouth, who unrelatedly have recently signed a 56-year-old Albanian left back, the striker from a Faroe Islands fisherman team and Zan Benedicic. 

The heroes and villains of the Becchetti era 2014-2017

In news that has brought joy to the hearts of every Orient fan, new chairman Nigel Travis has promised to get the club back to where it belongs. And where it belongs is in a League One relegation battle. 

It's a long road back to those glory days, so before we embark on the journey, let me take one final glance at the absolute carnage behind us with a selection of the heroes and the villains from Francesco Becchetti's catastrophic tenure of the club... 

HERO: Phillip Othen  
I think we've all come to love matchday announcer Phillip Othen for his brazen disregard for the conventions of colour matching in his choice of clothing; his Geordie-hen-night-esque refusal to wear a coat; and the fact that despite not being paid he carried on banging out the announcements almost as if he actually enjoyed it. That, and some subversive choices of pre-match songs over the aural torture instrument that doubles up as the Brisbane Road tannoy: Taxman by The Beatles; Charmless Man by Blur; Frankie by Sister Sledge... You didn't quite have the balls to play I Fucking Hate You by Godsmack though, did you Phil?



VILLAIN: Alessandro Angelieri 
To be fair, the former CEO of Leyton Orient is only a villain in the sense that an actor playing Captain Hook in a production of Peter Pan at a decrepit end-of-the-pier theatre is a villain. And really the analogy only stands up if that actor repeatedly forgets his lines, knocks over scenery and then inadvertently burns the whole theatre to the ground. Oh Alessandro. I mean, if anything a man who exists with no apparent sign of a brain should be lauded as a miracle of science, rather than lambasted for his stratospheric incompetence.



HERO: Linda Hendon
Were it not for the intervention of Linda, the prevailing memory of the Ian Hendon era would be the spectacle of Sean Clohessy hitting the nearest defender with an attempted cross, repeating on an endless loop like an infinite version of Chinese water torture. Luckily, however, the manager's wife-to-be was not going to let the fact that her husband was inexplicably aggressive towards fans and media stop her dishing out her own form of social media justice. Highlights included labelling mild-mannered fan Elliot Byrne as the "least intelligent person on Twitter" and flipping her lid when – post-sacking – she and Ian were apparently denied a free ticket to watch a game. A woman scorned...



VILLAIN: The Plymouth Herald  
Orient's stunning last-gasp 3-2 victory away at high-fliers Plymouth in February gave fans a glimmer of hope that perhaps relegation wasn't inevitable. Until, that is, the Plymouth Herald mounted a campaign against Liam Kelly for mildly shoving a six foot, 17-year-old ball boy. "KELLY SHOULD BE TORTURED TO DEATH FOR HIS BLOODTHIRSTY MURDER ATTEMPT ON A CHILD" ran their headlines for days and days, almost as if there is no news at all in Plymouth ever. A grown man, who is also a journalist, literally wrote some words calling for the FA to "impose a significant punishment" on Kelly and called the incident "shocking". The ball boy himself has now become the most famous person ever to hail from Plymouth, and is sometimes almost recognised as far and wide as nearby Saltash and Botusfleming. Kelly, of course, got a six-game ban...



HERO: Michael Collins 
It's hard to single out just one player from the last three seasons because every single player was absolute dog shit. JOKE! Plaudits of course to the entire youth team, Dean Cox, Jay Simpson and... yep, that's about it apart from Michael Collins. Pop into Brisbane Road right now and you're still likely to see him storming around the pitch, fighting the lost cause with every last breath – all without actually being paid. A king among men.



VILLAIN: Rob Gagliardi 
Early in Becchetti's tenure, Ryman Rob had the hardest job in the world: namely translating Fabio Liverani's demented ramblings into English. Luckily for the handsome Italian – via a stint as goalkeeping coach – he was then bumped upstairs to be head of recruitment. And who can blame him for accepting the role? After all, if I was entirely unqualified to do anything at all I'd probably take a well-paid job as a brain surgeon if someone was lunatic enough to offer it to me. And if I did, I would still probably cause far less horror with my scalpel than Gagliardi's signings of Jens Janse, Teddy Mezague and Ulrich N'Nomo inflicted on the football pitch.



HERO: Frederico Morais  
By 2017 an increasingly unhinged Francesco Becchetti was getting through coaching staff quicker than his pre-match bottles of Valpolicella. On April Fools' Day, Stone Island model Omar Riza made his debut in the manager's hot seat for a clash with Wycombe Wanderers, only to get sent off at half-time. That led to the bizarre spectacle of previously unknown 13-year-old boy Frederico Morais fulfilling the second-half coaching duties on the touchline, yelling instructions such as "STOP GOAL-HANGING!", "SCRAMBLE GOALKEEPERS!" and "IF YOU DON'T PASS TO US WE'RE TAKING THE BALL HOME!" And fair play to the young lad, he prevented the opposition scoring any goals during his 45-minute stint.



VILLAIN: Francesco Becchetti 
In reality we all know there's only one villain in all of this. I've called Francesco Becchetti many things over the years – a lot of it libellous. Spiteful, incompetent, psychopathic, vain... no doubt he's all of those things. What became apparent during his final couple of months as owner of Leyton Orient was that he is also a rank coward. A coward for not having the guts to offer even a single word of explanation to fans or media as to how things had gone quite so badly. No apology for putting families in jeopardy by not paying wages. No justification for buying a leather jacket with a canary-yellow collar. His parting shot: an evidently-ghostwritten quote that even so provided a final insight into his deluded mind-state: "I have, unfortunately, not been able to dedicate myself to following the club as closely as I would have wanted." As if the reason for the whole catastrophe was his lack of involvement rather than the diametric opposite. Thankfully it's been proved that Leyton Orient is sturdy enough to withstand the attacks of a lunatic owner hellbent on destroying it. We survived, and now the only way is up. Metaphorically, that is. Technically we could end up in a National League relegation battle. But as long as Francesco Becchetti is nowhere near it, that's just fine by me...



Not massively bored or offended by any of this? Here's a selection of other posts I've written during the Becchetti era: 

Orient v Colchester and the pitch invasion 29/4/17 

An open letter to Francesco Becchetti 17/3/17 

The 10 good things about the 2014/15 season 14/5/2015

How to relegate a football club in 11 easy steps 9/5/2015

How has it come to this? 19/4/15

Our proud history: An open letter to Francesco Becchetti 1/10/14

The 10 good things about the 2014/15 season

Cheer up you miserable fuckers. Just because we got relegated, have alienated all our players, have an uncertain future and are the laughing stock of the football world, it’s not all bad. In fact, there were plenty of good things about his season. Well, ten anyway, if you really scrape the bottom of a barrel. Here they are… 

1. The arrival of the most handsome man in football. If not the world… 

It's a novel approach for a football club to employ a professional interpreter and then ask him to be goalkeeping coach in his spare time. But never mind that, for it was enough to stare into Rob Gagliardi's dreamy eyes and be beguiled by his long, flowing locks as he calmly translated the demented ramblings of Fabio Liverani into English. Gagliardi is possibly one of the reasons the Orient players were entirely unable to concentrate throughout each game, for if someone that thunderingly handsome is delivering the team talk who can blame them for taking to the pitch with all sorts of conflicting emotions?

2. The second coming of Marvin Bartley 

There’s only one Orient player who can claim to have had a better season than last, and that’s Marvin Bartley, baby. The reason is that for the midfielder to have had a worse season than last, he’d have had to have scored 47 own goals or accidentally sliced off Kevin Lisbie’s legs with a kitchen knife. Still, improvement must be applauded and there were few sights as thrilling this season as Marvin Bartley bludgeoning his way through the midfield towards goal and almost certain dispossession. If he keeps improving at this rate by 2032 we’re going to have a hell of a fifth-choice central midfielder in our squad. 

3. The hallucinogenic madness of the man of the match awards

Dagnall: played out of his skin

In seasons past a couple of representatives from the matchday sponsors would rock up at Brisbane Road, try to be polite about the quality of the food in Theo’s restaurant and then award the man of the match to Dean Cox. Job done. Not this season though, where the man of the match awards have become some sort of avant-garde parody of the club. Against Crewe, for example, Chris Dagnall scored about 11 goals, made 39 assists and played out of his skin to such an extent he was tearing around the pitch in a blur of veins, arteries and mucus. Despite all that, the sponsors gave the man of the match award to Romain Vincelot, who was at the time back home watching his beard. 

4. The Orient podcasts

E10 Mess and a walking, talking bad hair day 

It’s typical isn’t it. You wait forever for an Orient podcast then four turn up at once. But what a pleasure it was to follow our catastrophe of a season in the company of Orient Ramble, E10 Mess, Orient Outlook and Whipps Cross Weekly. Each had its own unique charm – E10 Mess’s hilarious tribute songs; Whipp Cross Weekly’s incisive analysis; Orient Outlook’s revealing interviews; and Orient Ramble’s lengthy diversions into the merits of various savoury snacks – and each deserves a lot of credit for the amount of effort put in by their creators. 

5. The enigma of Gianvito Plasmati

Gianvito Plasmati 

If there’s one player who can hold his head up high this season, it’s Gianvito Plasmati. Only in the literal sense though: he's 6ft 6in. He introduced himself to Brisbane Road by emitting a bloodcurdling scream and poleaxing himself to the ground after hearing a whispered insult from a Preston midfielder. It went downhill from there, though it’s hard to dislike a guy who despite his many limitations played each game with all the bounding enthusiasm of a retarded cocker spaniel. He’ll probably tear up League Two.

6. The comeuppance of Jamie Jones and George Porter

Whatever possessed Jamie Jones to send (and then hastily delete) a tweet goading the fans of the club that gave him his chance in professional football and paid his wages for six seasons? Probably amoeba-like levels of stupidity. Still, the last laugh was on us as the goalkeeper was unceremoniously shipped out on loan from Preston. See you in League Two, Scouse! George Porter, meanwhile, is a bell-end of monumental proportions, but after mocking his former club’s relegation was on the receiving end of this zinger from Craig Delew: “From Burnley to Maidstone, if Carlsberg did failed careers..." 

7. Tell ‘em about the honey, Andrea

Andrea Dossena

Remember Andrea Dossena's volleyed scissor kick from the touchline in his home debut? Well that was the solitary highlight of the ex-Liverpool star's season as he subsequently took it upon himself to try to single-handedly relegate the club with defending of the most kamikaze order. So it was with much mirth that Orient fans greeted the news that Dossena had been arrested over a jar of Harrods honey, entirely forgetting to pay for it almost as if he was supposed to be marking it at a corner. Thereon the jokes wrote themselves: “Hope he hires a good lawyer because he’s no good at defending himself.” And so forth.

8. The performances of Eldin Jakupovic Mk II

What’s the world record for the number of goals conceded by a football club in a single season? Well, whatever it is Orient would have beaten it in 2014/15 were it not for the magnificence of Alex Cisak. With a defence failing calamitously to get to grips with zonal marking, the goalkeeper must have felt like a president being assassinated by knife-wielding assailants while his bodyguards fiercely guarded random patches of ground nearby. That he is even spoken about in the same breath as Eldin Jakupovic is testament to his contribution. 

9. The die-hard fantaticism of Giulia Salemi 

Giulia Salemi has been a die-hard fan of Leyton Orient since birth and has religiously followed the fortunes of the club her whole life by sometimes reading the BBC Sport website. It was for this reason she was chosen as the co-host of the Italian reality show “Leyton Orient". Coincidentally she is also a former Miss Italia and a model of some repute. Coincidentally she also just fired her agent. What to make of all of this? Well, why don’t you ask her yourself? She’s bound to be in the Coach and Horses before our key relegation clash with Barnet next season. 

10. The ever-patient Orient fans

Yes, that’s you lot. In a season in which the club didn’t bother to communicate, collaborate or try to win any matches the vast majority of Orient fans have shown vast wells of resilience and good humour. 1-0 down against Rochdale away, staring down the barrel of League Two and you were still singing your hearts out. Nearly 1,000 of you turned up to watch Orient get relegated at Swindon. And even when you were frustrated, you showed it in a uniquely Orient way, as captured in the tweet of the season from Craig Rodhouse: “Only at Orient. A fan throws his season ticket at the bench on the last home game of the season. We know how to protest.”