Orient Depress

Ever since Barry Hearn sold Leyton Orient, the club has been on a slow train to nowhere.

Hearn took control of the club in 1995, for £5, and proceeded to redevelop the stadium whilst overseeing a steady rise of the football side. Brisbane Road was renamed the Matchroom Stadium, after Hearn's sporting empire, and redeveloped on all four sides in complicated deals with flats and offices attached.

On the pitch the club took 11 years under Hearn to win promotion to League One, but steadily established their position and come within a whisker of the Championship with a play-off final defeat to Peterborough in 2014.

Weeks after Wembley the club was sold to Italian Francesco Becchetti for a reported £4million and the decline started almost immediately.

The club had four managers within three months of Becchetti's arrival and ended up being relegated by the end of that first season. Hearn had seven managers in nearly 20 years. Becchetti, currently on ten in two and a half years, saw his last two out the door after just nine games each.

The current incumbent has been promoted from within, but whether it was an appointment out of necessity or ability is anyone's guess at this time. Daniel Webb was assistant to the Under 18's manager, Andy Edwards, 18 months ago. Two weeks ago he was appointed to replace Edwards as First Team manager.

Orient have lost every game so far in 2017, six so far, having last won on Boxing Day. Their latest loss, at home to Morecambe, saw five youth team products appear in the first XI. Not a problem usually, but two of them were just 17 and there were three more youngsters on the bench. There's been plenty of talk about the Premier League u23 sides being unable to cope with first team football against League Two sides - half of Orient's matchday squad were under 21 that night.

The owner has alienated supporters with a wall of silence over the goings-on at Brisbane Road, and the Leyton Orient Fans Trust (dodging the LOST acronym that would have come from the tradition reference as a Supporters Trust) are holding a Special General Meeting in March to discuss disaster planning and set up a 'fighting fund'.

Their call is for Becchetti to either leave, or implement a hands-off role and leave the business to be run by a competent CEO that talks to supporters and a football manager that knows the level they operate at and can be left alone to do his job.

Given the track record of Italians owning English football clubs, both options seem unlikely.