GUEST BLOG! Oldham Athletic 1 Leyton Orient 3, 16/8/14

With Orient in the midst of their deepest crisis ever, having lost 100% of their league games so far this season, Andy Brown travelled to Oldham to see if they could dig themselves out of their hole. Here's what he wrote... 

A game in which… Like buses, you wait for one to come along and three turn up at once. Yup, not
only did Orient return to winning ways in the league with three goals, but strikers scored all them and Dean Cox took his tally of assists for the season to 50 (Ok, five, but that’s still insane for three matches).

Scott Cuthbert’s return to the back four had little impact in the first half as they continued to play with all the precision of Stevie Wonder playing darts. Forte raced through unchallenged to put Oldham 1-0 up, but Cox and Henderson (who’s already earned his own song) yet again proved the decisive double-act in goals and assists to help the Os to a comfortable second half and deserved away win.

Jump off your seat moment... David Mooney responded to criticism of his shocking 1.5 game barren spell with a well taken goal from a narrow angle. It was a team goal that bore all the hallmarks of Germany’s mauling of Brazil in the World Cup, with Cox and Henderson’s superb vision picking out Mooney, who took his time to finish well. I cannot remember him being caught offside at any point either, so you may want to bookmark this historic occasion for posterity.

Dean Cox: More assists than tattoos

Give that man a medal… Dean Cox now has more assists than tattoos this season, which is impressive. While credit goes to Pritchard and Vincelot for their second half impressions of whippets chasing a rabbit, and Henderson for a complete centre-forward performance, Cox provided the continued vision and class to take the game away from Oldham, with the pass and cross assists for the first and third goals and ball into Henderson for the second, scored by Mooney.

Taxi for… Inspector Gadget or Hornblower as he became known, the Os fan who throughout the game abused a succession of instruments, from a high pitched horn, to lower-pitched horns to kazoos that you would find in a cracker to jingle bells, all of which were greeted with a warm reception of “Shut the fuck up, you’re giving me tinnitus."

Not so much a one man band, more how I imagine Sweep would sound if introduced face-first into a blender.

“Fuck the technical shit”...  Orient did a fantastic Jekyll and Hyde impression, with an ugly, disjointed first half and sublimely controlled second half. “What I asked them to do at ten to three, they didn’t do until after four o’clock” complained Russell Slade in the post-match interview.

Whatever Slade said at half-time, it clearly worked, as the team tightened up second half and Oldham didn’t get a clear shot on goal. Meanwhile a slightly delusional Lee Johnson felt Oldham weren’t ruthless enough: "That's what's frustrating, to know how to have a team on the ropes and then to kill them, punish them”. Er, Ok Lee, only everyone else saw a different game.

Meanwhile on Vine... A couple of fine Vines in contention this week. Everyone’s least favourite diving prima donna Ashley Young appeared to suffer the ignominy of a seagull deftly aiming its faeces into his mouth during Man Utd’s defeat to Swansea-surely a sign from the big man upstairs?

Meanwhile the winner goes to Martin Shaw for spotting a cracking Vine of a pitch invader at the West Ham v Spurs game who proceeded to run up and chip a freekick over the West Ham wall. The best part is the reaction from the West Ham wall who wondered if it had gone in, the Spurs player ruing the missed chance and the fat steward running after him Benny Hill style. Football gold, only made better by the result.