A game in which... it looked suspiciously like the Orient defence was in fact a huge practical joke being secretly filmed for season two of the Italian reality TV show. What else could explain their catastrophic ineptitude, except maybe that they were all signed, trained, selected and instructed by Ian Hendon?It was a fitting final swan song for the now-sacked manager, in which he characteristically selected the wrong starting XI in the wrong formation with the wrong tactics then subsequently blamed all the players for getting it all so wrong. Under the current regime it's unlikely we'll do any better with a new gaffer, but we surely can't do any worse...
Jump off your seat moment... Two thoroughly undeserved penalties which Jay Simpson presumably missed on purpose as a way of hastening the manager's departure. Imagine where we'd be if Hendon hadn't been gifted Simpson and Cisak: that's right, in the Guinness Book of Records for Worst Goal Difference Ever In The History Of Football.
Give that man a medal... The aforementioned Alex Cisak prevented the score being 42-1 and has undoubtedly chained his agent up in a basement with a view to systematically torturing him over the course of the next 40 years as punishment for his cataclysmic error of judgement in bringing the Championship-standard keeper to Orient in the first place.
Taxi for... The entire squad apart from Simpson and Cisak. I mean, imagine if a tone deaf but inexplicably aggressive guinea pig was appointed to be the conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. You'd certainly be sympathetic to a drop in their usual standards of performance, but you'd still expect a bunch of professional musicians to at least be able to string a few notes together, regardless of the incompetence of their leader.In the dug out... Really, Hendon was on a hiding to nothing serving under such a batshit mental regime. God only knows what lunacy goes on behind the scenes and it's unlikely Orient will ever achieve anything other than another relegation or two until that changes. On the other hand the manager didn't really do himself any favours by offering to fight fans; being so willing to blame anyone but himself for his shortcomings; and signing Connor Essam. I'm not saying he was out of his depth, but... *taps microphone* ... if Brisbane Road was a leisure centre he'd have been flailing around helplessly in the kids' pool while threatening the lifeguards for criticising his attempts at the doggy paddle.
Meanwhile on Twitter... Now, we're all well used to the official communication channels of Leyton Orient airbrushing and manipulating stories like a psychotic North Korean dictatorship. But few of us would have expected them to go as far as trying to alter the result of an actual real-life football match being witnessed by over 5,000 people and the TV cameras of Channel 5. But, by Christ they gave it their best shot on Twitter after Jay Simpson missed the first of his two penalties, posting "2-3 Game On". I look forward to them re-classifying the reign of Ian Hendon as nothing more than "banter"...
