Marked for Michael Atkinson
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad7 May 2035
17 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Leyton Orient lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Boardroom7 May 2035
Interim Coach has until the next board meeting
What was said behind closed doors has now been said in front of a microphone. Everybody at Leyton Orient can do the arithmetic, including the man it is aimed at.
Boardroom7 May 2035
The Leyton Orient board call everybody in
Nothing has been announced and everybody understands what it means. A board that summons the whole football department on a Tuesday morning is a board that has stopped believing the problem will fix itself.
Market7 May 2035
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Leyton Orient they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad7 May 2035
Richard Young and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad7 May 2035
Words at Leyton Orient training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Michael Adu-Poku 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.
Squad7 May 2035
“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.
Market7 May 2035
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Leyton Orient, another week without a signature from Aidan West.
The dugout7 May 2035
James Morris without the man who signed him
Every squad is half players the manager chose and half players he inherited. James Morris was chosen, the man who chose him has gone, and he starts again from nothing under the next one.
In brief
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The dugout
The manager has not finished forgetting Gustav Bjerge's mistake
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The dugout
Aidan West knocks on the manager’s door
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The dugout
No hiding place for Ignacio
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad30 Apr 2035
A knee injury of the worst kind for Michael Atkinson
24 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Leyton Orient lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match28 Apr 2035
No end in sight to Leyton Orient's wait for a win
9 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.
Match30 Apr 2035
Full time on the season at Leyton Orient
Position 21 on 41 points. Every season is a story and this is the last line of it, and now the club has three months to decide what the next one is about.
Market30 Apr 2035
Gustav Bjerge has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Leyton Orient they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Market30 Apr 2035
“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.
The dugout30 Apr 2035
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Squad30 Apr 2035
John Arthur was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad30 Apr 2035
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Michael Adu-Poku was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Match24 Apr 2035
Wycombe Wanderers left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad23 Apr 2035
Michael Atkinson damages knee ligaments — 31 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 31 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Boardroom23 Apr 2035
Pressure builds in the Leyton Orient boardroom
The directors have stopped offering the manager public warmth. In football that is usually the stage before the short statement.
Match21 Apr 2035
7 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.
Match21 Apr 2035
7 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Leyton Orient can tell you which week it ends in.
Market23 Apr 2035
Only the photograph left for Elicha Ahui
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Elicha Ahui will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Leyton Orient the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Market23 Apr 2035
David Botka hands in a written request
“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.
The dugout23 Apr 2035
This is not rotation. Aleksandar Grašeski has not been in the manager's plans for some time, and nobody at Leyton Orient is pretending otherwise.
Squad23 Apr 2035
John Arthur 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.
Squad23 Apr 2035
Michael Adu-Poku 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
Crisis
The terraces16 Apr 2035
The mood at Leyton Orient has turned into something else
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
Squad16 Apr 2035
Michael Atkinson damages knee ligaments — 38 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 38 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Match14 Apr 2035
A 0‑4 beating by Blackpool was the sort of result that empties a stadium long before the final whistle.
Match16 Apr 2035
Position 22, 39 points, and a fixture list with fewer games left in it than excuses. The arithmetic is not cruel yet, but it has stopped being kind.
Match14 Apr 2035
No end in sight to Leyton Orient's wait for a win
6 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.
Match14 Apr 2035
6 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
The dugout16 Apr 2035
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Market16 Apr 2035
Eden Onana has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Leyton Orient they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad16 Apr 2035
John Arthur and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.