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...

Leyton Orient 3 Yeovil Town 0, 14/3/15

Yeovil Town

A game in which... Orient coasted to a routine victory – assuming, that is, that your 'routine' involves torturing wounded and helpless kittens. Yep, it's difficult to describe quite how pitiful Yeovil were except to say that they were almost as wretched as the Orient side of about six weeks ago.

Still, you can only beat what's put in front of you and in fact the home team played some pretty enticing football, especially during a first half in which they could have legitimately been four or five-nil up. Tougher tests will come for Orient – tying their own shoelaces, for example, or naming a fruit beginning with the letter 'a'  – but the signs were positive today.

Jump off your seat moment... Marvin Bartley has the unenviable task of replacing the injured Romain Vincelot for the rest of the season, which is a bit like asking Stacey Solomon to stand in for Brigitte Bardot. But God knows the former and future window-fitter tried his little heart out and it was his run and lay-off that led to the second goal.

Give that man a medal... Excellent performances all round, but in particular from Baudry, Cuthbert, McAnuff, Dossena and Hedges. And of course Chris Dagnall, as ever, scuttled round incessantly like a cockroach on a hot tin roof. But let's take this moment to hail a classy performance by on-loan right back Luke O'Neill (or "Nell" as Liverani insists on yelling at him), who's brought some stability and attacking impetus to the flank since his arrival from Burnley.

Taxi for... There were no bad performances from anyone in an Orient shirt so let's instead focus on the Yeovil fan who, presumably figuring that life was no longer worth living if he had to watch a single second more of the Glovers, chose to scale the girders into the roof of the East Stand. Given that the ancient stand is now held together by nothing more than a couple of safety pins, some sellotape and the shattered dreams of Peterborough fans, it's a miracle he survived. Still, he got arrested and ejected from the ground, so will probably consider missing the second half worth his trouble.

"Fuck the technical shit"... One can only imagine the sheer force of will it took Fabio Liverani to not select a fit Bradley Pritchard, but in doing so he managed to send out a starting XI that attacked with some verve. So fair play to him. It's still difficult, mind, to tell how much tactical insight is going on in between all the frantic touchline arm-waving, but given we won let's at least assume that his semaphore isn't actively detracting from our performances.

Meanwhile on Instagram... Say hello to Giulia Salemi, former Miss Italy, Agon Channel presenter and die-hard Leyton Orient fan since as far back as last week. I had the pleasure of interviewing Giulia this evening in my own imagination and discovered that her all-time favourite Orient legend is Ryan Hedges; her favourite goal ever is Ryan Hedges' strike against Yeovil Town today; and in all her time supporting Orient the player she'd most like to date is Ryan Hedges.

Leyton Orient 4 Yeovil Town 1, 18/9/12

A game in which... Russell Slade proved this joker wrong: "It's antiquated to think football is simply a 4-4-2 system. The game has changed. It's not like that now." (Russell Slade, Leyton Orientear, August 2012) Yes, what a joy it was to see an Orient side bristling with energy, purpose and attacking intent - and playing two up front at home. Sure, the approach was direct, but the intensity repeatedly left the Yeovil defence as exposed as a topless princess in a private French chateau.

Moment of magic... An incredible five-minute spell of showboating towards the end of the game which featured a Jimmy Smith backheel, a couple of Moses Odubajo stepovers and no less than three - yes, three - attempts on goal by substitute David Mooney, only one of which ballooned towards the corner flag. Less the Harlem Globetrotters, though, more the Leyton Cheap Day Return To Canvey Islanders.

Moment of madness... Ryan Brunt's over-exuberant celebration of Kevin Lisbie's goal, resulting in a need for medical assistance. What's he going to do if David Mooney scores - lop his own leg off with a chainsaw?

Knight in shining armour... So impressive was the Orient performance tonight that pretty much the whole team could stake a claim to the man of the match award. Allsop, Chorley, Griffith, Lisbie, Brunt and Smith were all particularly good, but let's focus on Dean Cox. Playing on the left in the second half he repeatedly got on the ball and created opportunities by cutting inside - much as he did throughout the 2010/11 season. Which begs the question as to why Slade persisted with playing him in the middle for so long, a decision akin to convincing Al Pacino to star in an amateur dramatic production of The Mousetrap, only to assign him the role of the corpse.

Pantomime horse... No bad performances from any of the Orient team tonight, but one-time Premier League referee Keith Stroud made up for it with a series of increasingly bizarre decisions, not least his denial of an Orient penalty when Nathan Ralph brought Ryan Brunt to the ground with all the finesse of an inebriated Somerset farm hand attacking a love rival with an oversized scythe.

In the dug out... When Yeovil pulled the score back to 2-1 just after half-time it looked for a moment as if we might be heading for a repeat of last season's soul-destroying capitulation to the Somerset side. But, fair play to Russell, he had a smile on his face tonight, so either everything was going to plan or Kevin Dearden was reworking his much-loved comedy routine of repeatedly breaking wind and then pointing at Marc Laird accusingly.

View from the opposition... "Orient passed the ball well and really capitalised on some poor Yeovil defending," says Glovers fan Sheridan Robins. "Your number nine always looked a threat and we failed to deal with him. Orient looked a better side than last season but if Yeovil had scored when on top at 2-1 I think it would have been a different story as your heads would have dropped."

Meanwhile on Twitter... Os fans could do far worse than following Lee Cook. The diminutive winger mixes incisive analysis of celebrity women - "Kelly Brook #withoutthembangersyouwouldworkindixons" and "Mila kunis looks as ropey as shit in the papers today!", for example -  with horrifying tales of mowing down innocent animals in Essex: "Bare road kill in woodford! So far 2 squirrels and a rabbit in a pickle!" It's like George Porter meets Ray Mears.

Statto corner... Tonight Orient amassed more shots on goal in a single game than they managed throughout the entire 2011/12 season.

Leyton Orient 2 Yeovil Town 2, 21/4/12

A game in which... Orient did the footballing equivalent of spending 84 minutes tentatively and inexpertly building a makeshift sandcastle, only to see it kicked down by two mild-mannered eight-year-old girls. Or, to dispense with the metaphors and give a more technical appraisal of the game: Orient are shit.

For while, relatively speaking, the home side put in a reasonable performance in the first 45 minutes, one of Russell Slade's now legendary half-time team talks sent the Os back out on the pitch with all the fire in their bellies of someone who's just eaten a bowl of tofu-flavoured blancmange. Even then, Orient were just eight minutes from virtual League One safety, but given the confidence with which they're playing at the moment, the capitulation was all too predictable.

Moment of magic... Jamie Jones's athletic first-half save, pushing a rifling shot from Andy Williams against the bar. We can only dream what may have been had the Scouser been between the sticks all season. We might have only lost 4-0 to Brentford, for example.

Moment of madness... Yeovil's 92nd-minute equaliser, in which yet again Orient failed to defend a relatively innocuous set piece. I'm not saying the current team are bottlers, but there are 11 vacancies at the local Coca-Cola factory which they'd be well-qualified for.

Knight in shining armour... It says a lot about our season that one of our most valuable players has been a striker who's only scored 12 goals, but God knows we'd be down and out without Kevin Lisbie. Today the former Charlton man put in another battling, classy performance - and linked up well with Jamal Campbell-Ryce - but nonetheless he must feel at times like a lead singer who takes to the stage only to find his band has forgotten how to play all the songs. (Or never knew them in the first place.)

Pantomime horse... He's been out for six weeks and has actually been one of the better performers this season, but Leon McSweeney had a shocker - especially in the first half. Particularly bizarre was his decision to compensate for his woeful passing by electing to repeatedly shoot from 45 yards.

In the dug out... There's been much post-match talk about the wisdom of Russell substituting (injured) Adam Reed and Jamal Campbell-Ryce for Jimmy Smith and Calvin Andrew in the 90th minute, though to be honest wasting a bit of time to bring on an experienced midfielder and someone whose height might help in defending corners wasn't the most insane decision the manager's ever made. That was signing Andrew in the first place. More of an issue was the ongoing spectacle of just how negatively Slade presumably asked Orient to play in the second half.

A word on the opposition... Credit to the Yeovil fans for keeping up their bizarre pagan cowbell chant throughout the entirety of the first half - bombed out of their minds on cider, no doubt. And while their team can't be described as the classiest to play at Brisbane Road this season, they certainly aren't the worst. That honour goes to Orient.

Meanwhile on Twitter... An extraordinary spat between Dean Cox and ex-O Gabriel Zakuani, who tweeted "If Orient went down it would probably hurt me more than any player that's currently there." "No it wouldn't," Tiny fired back. "Disrespectful saying that... your spose to be an experienced pro, you should know better. You have been and gone your a Peterborough player concentrate on that." Go Coxy! If only we could translate all the energy the players put into tweeting how up for it they are into actual performances we might just scrape out of this mess.

Lesson for the day... Which this week comes from Russell Slade himself, who said post-match: "We're in a better position than what we were before today's game." Which is an interesting way of interpreting the fact that Chesterfield and Exeter both gained two points on us. Essentially, we're in deep trouble. Where the hell is Accrington Stanley anyway?

Leyton Orient 1 Yeovil Town 5, 26/3/11

A game which... was something akin to erecting a sign at a T-junction reading 'Turn left to see Megan Fox sunbathing naked.' That is, nothing went right. Even if Orient had turned up with their pockets bursting full of rabbits' feet, four-leaf clovers and horseshoes, the luck still wouldn't have gone their way.

Conceding a wonder goal on nine minutes off the inside of the post, having a player sent off six minutes later (I'm afraid I couldn't see it clearly enough to comment sensibly on it), giving away a penalty, losing Stephen Dawson to injury, falling foul of criminally inept refeering... The only thing that could have made the afternoon worse was if Olly Murs had turned up at the end and launched into a rendition of Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life.

Moment to savour... The final whistle. Oh, and two delightful reflex saves from Jamie Jones in the second half, helping Orient to keep the goals conceded down to five.

Head in hands moment... Many Orient free-kick takers over the years have managed to repeatedly hit row Z of the North Stand with pinpoint accuracy. Today Dean Cox went one better, actually clearing the roof of the stadium with his first-half effort.

King for a day... Amid all the first-half shenanigans, it almost escaped notice that Jonathan Tehoue was actually putting in a decent shift in his second start in a row. Winning headers, tracking back, making a nuisance of himself and, unsually, keeping his first touch to within six yards of himself.


Boo boy... Stand-in left back Jason Crowe had such a shocker in the first half that screenwriters are already adapting his performance into a horror film. It's not his natural position, granted, but the on-loan man was torn apart time and time again down the right flank.

In the dug out... In Russ we trust, but there's been some bemusing team selections over the last couple of games. Dropping Andrew Whing, leaving Jimmy Smith on the bench, rotating between Tom Carroll and Adam Chambers in midfield... Still, at least Russ didn't react to the unfolding madness in front him by losing his head and bringing on Ryan Jarvis or something.

What would Martin Ling have done? Gone absolutely livid about the performance of referee Geoff Eltringham. "I totally lost the plot with him after the game, that's for sure," he'd say. "Well, when I say that I mean I didn't shake his hand very enthusiastically. But I reckon he got the message."

Play-offs? Don't despair. If we win our games in hand we're still only two points off both Bournemouth and MK Dons. And with nine games to go we're still very much in it. Besides, Orient have a nice history of bouncing back from big defeats, just like we did in January.