Marked for Facundo Cabral
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match24 Jun 2028
Rarely has this fixture seen a display like it: 3‑0 against Lincoln City, and it could have been more.
Market26 Jun 2028
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Rotherham United have lost him in all but the paperwork.
Match26 Jun 2028
The last league game has been played and the table has stopped moving: 69 points. The summer begins on Monday, and so does the argument about what it all meant.
Player ratings26 Jun 2028
A brace, and Braiden Graham takes the afternoon — 9.38
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Braiden Graham provided it, and the 9.38 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Market26 Jun 2028
The paperwork is done: Kieran Dowell joins from Hull City in a deal worth $10.7M. Now comes the harder part.
Transfer targets26 Jun 2028
$13.4M was the most the club would pay and Ipswich Town were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
Match24 Jun 2028
11 games unbeaten now. Some were earned and some were survived, but a habit is forming — and habits are the hardest thing in football to play against.
Transfer targets26 Jun 2028
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Burnley have kept their man, and Rotherham United go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Transfer targets26 Jun 2028
$280.0K settles it between the clubs for Facundo Cabral
Leyton Orient have accepted the money. What Rotherham United do not yet have is the man, and between here and the photograph is a conversation about wages that both sides are dreading.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Transfer targets12 Jun 2028
$440.0K settles it between the clubs for Patrik Carlgren
Arsenal have accepted the money. What Leyton Orient do not yet have is the man, and between here and the photograph is a conversation about wages that both sides are dreading.
Market12 Jun 2028
Add another name to the list: Lech have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Stefan Bajčetić. The answer from Leyton Orient has not changed — yet.
Market12 Jun 2028
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Leyton Orient can pretend not to have heard.
Market12 Jun 2028
The bid was some way short and Leyton Orient did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Transfer targets12 Jun 2028
Cardiff City wanted more than $670.0K and the board would not go there. Walked away, for now, which in a transfer window means until somebody blinks.
Squad12 Jun 2028
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Leyton Orient this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratings12 Jun 2028
22 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
Squad12 Jun 2028
A move Harry Taylor would have made for nothing
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Harry Taylor is living that version at Leyton Orient, and it tends to show in the first month.
Squad12 Jun 2028
Stefan Bajčetić falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market14 Feb 2028
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Match12 Feb 2028
6 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Market14 Feb 2028
The bid was some way short and Leyton Orient did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad14 Feb 2028
Stefan Bajčetić and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Squad14 Feb 2028
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Conor Coady was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Player ratings14 Feb 2028
Successful dribbles: 20. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
The dugout14 Feb 2028
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Isaac Hayden, and the manager let it.
Market14 Feb 2028
“There is a gap, and pretending there is not helps nobody.” Neither side has moved, and the calendar is working for exactly one of them.
Squad14 Feb 2028
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Leyton Orient are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad7 Feb 2028
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 10 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Market7 Feb 2028
The bid was some way short and Leyton Orient did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Market7 Feb 2028
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Leyton Orient have lost him in all but the paperwork.
Market7 Feb 2028
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Match5 Feb 2028
No end in sight to Leyton Orient's wait for a win
5 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Leyton Orient has to find a result from somewhere.
Boardroom7 Feb 2028
Window shuts: 2 in, 8 out at Leyton Orient
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 2 arrived, 8 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Market7 Feb 2028
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Squad7 Feb 2028
Idris El Mizouni and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Squad7 Feb 2028
Words at Leyton Orient training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Stefan Bajčetić is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market10 Jan 2028
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Peterborough United waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Leyton Orient is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Market10 Jan 2028
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Leyton Orient, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad10 Jan 2028
Idris El Mizouni and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Squad10 Jan 2028
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Stefan Bajčetić was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Transfer targets10 Jan 2028
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Ajax have kept their man, and Leyton Orient go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The dugout10 Jan 2028
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Will Forrester, and the manager let it.
Player ratings10 Jan 2028
Successful dribbles: 17. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Match8 Jan 2028
The board was up, the win was priced in, and then Swansea City scored. There is no worse minute to concede in and the ground emptied in the silence that follows one.
Squad10 Jan 2028
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Leyton Orient can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.