Masters: Orient Can Do It….Maybe

Just three games are available for Orient to secure their future in League One and with two teams already gone, it appears that the O`s will fight it out with Bradford, Cheltenham, Chesterfield and a Brighton side that is sinking rather rapidly with each passing week.

Here, Vital Orient editor Jay Masters, gives us his view on the current situation.

Nobody that is reading this will be at all surprised that the O`s are heading into the last three games with their League One future on the line. In fact, if you go back to the first fifteen games, it`s quite remarkable that Orient have even given themselves a chance given the fact that they failed to compete over the first third of the season.

Any side that fails to compete over such a long period of time is bound to be threatened by relegation, that equation doesn`t need an Einstein to work it out. The recent form which has seen three defeats in the last four games has scarcely helped, but the damage was done at the start of the campaign with Orient playing catch up ever since.

Now is not the time to go into a post-mortem as to why the O`s failed to show up earlier in the season. Everyone has their own theory and each supporter knows in their heart of hearts that if the O`s do go down, they really only have themselves to blame.

It`s a harsh reality and it`s certainly a horrible thing to write. However, when a side has failed to perform for a 1/3 of the season, let a ridiculous number of leads slip and continually refrain from performing for the full ninety-minutes, it is little surprise that they find themselves in peril.

If Orient do escape this season, and I believe they will, then the lessons of this campaign must be learnt. At the moment, the team have given themselves a fighting chance and although they may not be enjoying the best of form, they have no better excuse to turn it around and save their skins.

There have been glimpses of what Orient are capable of, the victories at Forest, Millwall and Crewe come to mind. However, there have been far too many displays that have lacked any sort of performance. For every brilliant win at the City Ground, there have been at least two horror showings as seen at Brighton and Bournemouth.

‘Consistently inconsistent` is the way I usually describe Orient, you just never know what you`re going to get. That`s been the problem all year and it would take a brave person to suggest that they will find consistency in the final three games of the season.

Perhaps I`m brave, perhaps naïve, or maybe I`m committing the cardinal sin of writing from the heart instead of the head. Whatever the outcome this is Orient, this is what you get for supporting the O`s and in your heart of hearts, you wouldn`t change it for the world.

Anybody that is involved with LOFC needs no encouragement to bring up the subject of Lee Steele and ‘that goal in the last minute`, but it`s going to be that way again. This club has never done anything the easy way, they make us angry, they make us crazy but in the end, whatever happens, we cannot do anything but get behind the lads.

As fans it`s completely out of our hands and perhaps that`s the hardest thing to accept. It doesn`t matter what superstitions we carry out, whether I wear my ‘lucky Orient boxers` (so lucky that they`ve actually never seen us win), is not going to decide whether we stay in League One or not.

The next three weeks could be the biggest in the club`s history, relegation back to League Two would be a disaster and nobody needs reminding of how long it took us to get out of the basement division after our last relegation. We may not be able to do the business on the pitch as fans, but all of us have to play our part and that means backing the boys all the way through the mire, putting aside our grievences for the time being, holding back the scepticism and backing Martin Ling all the way.

Not for one moment am I suggesting that criticism should be censored, this website would not enjoy the following it has if that was they way. However, this Saturday at Bradford and for the next few games, it`s imperative that the team are backed to the hilt. It`s our football team, players may come and go but for many of us this is why we live for Saturday afternoons.

It`s been a rollercoaster of a season, it`s not over yet and with the final twists and turns still to come, who knows what is around the corner. What I will say is that with Orient you can always expect the unexpected.

Get behind the lads and Up the O`s!

Jay.