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With ghastly defending, horrific attacking and an eerie absence of tactics, this was a bloodcurdling performance from Ian Hendon's team. Yes, the league table says we're still in the play-off places, but 11 points in the last 11 games paints a truer picture of the scale of our gruesome predicament.
Jump off your seat moment... Orient had one clear-cut chance in the entire game. One. Tragically that chance fell to Connor Essam, who would likely not score a goal were he to play football infinitely in a time-space continuum. Now, I'm not saying Essam has a head like a 50p piece, because that would be a hideous slur on a 50p piece, which can theoretically only spin a ball off in one of seven random directions. But there really is little point in the defender coming up for corners if – like today – he can't convert into an open net from two yards.
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Essam and Baudry |
Taxi for... "Bradley Pritchard is a central midfielder and that's where he'll play," lied Ian Hendon at the start of the season before repeatedly sticking the former Charlton man out on the right where – as numerous former Orient managers have discovered and yet bizarrely ignored – he is utterly ineffective. The gaffer has now tried 4,567 different formations in his 18 games in charge, all of which contain both Pritchard and his footballing doppelgänger Sammy Moore in one guise or another. Unless Hendon knows of some ancient curse that says the hounds of hell will be unleashed on Brisbane Road should the pair ever be separated, it might be an idea to try dropping one of them.
In the dug out... Now, I am not suggesting that Ian Hendon should be sacked. (Though Becchetti pulled the trigger on Russell Slade for a run of results far less damaging than the current one.) But it would be helpful if the manager could give fans the slightest sense that he actually knows what he's doing rather than reverting to Liverani-esque behaviour such as inexplicably dropping star performers; publicly blaming his players in post-match press conferences; and double training sessions. What next: "Big house in the box"? The return of Gianvito Plasmati?
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