Spirit of Xmas lives on at Orient
Morecambe last played Leyton Orient just four weeks ago in Lancashire. Then, they came from behind to beat the team from East London 2-1 with a phenomenal performance after looking as if they were going to be both outplayed and outclassed for the first half hour or so of the contest. In recent matches, Leyton have won four games and lost just one. In previous meetings with Morecambe, Orient have won three and lost three, including the one last month at the Mazuma Stadium.
Orient’s last game at Carlisle was postponed due to winter weather in the frozen north but prior to that, Ross Embleton’s men had won three of their last five league games in a row. They started today’s match in League Two’s ninth position, a single point behind their visitors but having played two games more. Their Manager said before the game that his team must learn to both sustain the level of performance they put on during the first half hour against Morecambe for longer and regretted that they `didn’t get started’ in the second half against the Shrimps last time out. He added that his men needed to learn how to kill off other teams when they were on top.
Morecambe, meanwhile, have won four of their last five league matches and their only loss in recent times was across the capital at Stamford Bridge against Premier League giants Chelsea in the FA Cup last Sunday. Before that, the club had not played since Boxing Day due to a Coronavirus outbreak at the club. Today, though, Manager Derek Adams was able to pick from a virtually fully-fit squad. This didn’t include Jake Turner, who has been recalled by his parent club Newcastle United. With Mark Halstead in fine form, though, the impact this has had on the team is less than it might have been earlier in the season when Jake was the first choice goalkeeper. Sam Lavelle – absent altogether against Chelsea – was back in the side to skipper the side at the expense of Harry Davis and John O’Sullivan was preferred to Jordan Slew in the starting line-up this afternoon.
The home team put Dan Kemp – signed this week from nearby West Ham – on the bench today.
It was dry with wintry sunshine at times as the match kicked-off in East London. The pitch had been covered to protect it from frost overnight but when the covers came off, they were to reveal a surface like a ploughed field in patches with wet stretches down the sides. It cut-up from the off and didn’t help what was a really dreary forty-five minutes of football. Morecambe probably shaded this for the first quarter of an hour but after that, they played far too deep for my liking and simply invited Orient to get at them. This O’s team didn’t look anything like the same one which was so impressive only four weeks ago. They were predictable, ponderous and seemed to lack any urgency or the ability to penetrate the Shrimps’ deep defence. At free kicks, they usually had three men standing over the ball – Skipper Jobi McAnuff, Lee Angol and the biggest player on the field, Connor Wilkinson. Why? Every time they had a promising position, Angol tried to score – and hit the wall instead. Five minutes had been played when Dan Happe took a wayward shot from a long way out and missed the goal by a mile. At the other end, Carlos Mendes-Gomes set-up Adam Phillips after eight minutes for a shot which Lawrence Vigouroux did really well to get down low to his right and push away for a corner. Then Cole Stockton cleverly found Aaron Wildig with a disguised pass with seventeen minutes played – Aaron’s cheeky attempt at a lob from quite some distance was easily caught by Vigouroux. A minute later, Wilkinson produced another wild shot for Leyton which didn’t test the visiting goalkeeper either. Then he immediately forced Mark Halstead into a routine catch with a header at the far post from a narrow angle as Ruel Sotiriou had slung a good cross over from the Orient left. A free-kick after 26 minutes then fell to Sotiriou, whose instant, fierce shot flew just over the bar. Halstead then saved well from Craig Clay twice in two minutes with almost half an hour played. But the best chance of a poor half fell to the visitors with just three minutes left: Phillips played-in Carlos with a move that regularly pays dividends but this time, Orient’s huge French goalkeeper managed to push the resultant shot away for a corner with a tremendous save.
I personally hoped that Morecambe would play with more ambition during the second half. They duly did and should have taken the lead after three minutes of the restart. A clever flick by Cole found Phillips on the right and he, in turn, played in a low pass which the oncoming Yann Songo’o should have buried. Instead, he missed the target altogether. John O’Sullivan then made progress down the Leyton left again after 58 minutes only to see Wildig head wide at the far post. As a loud voice from the touchline suggested that the Orient defenders should jolly well talk to each other – or words to that effect – the home team again looked ponderous and I, for one, couldn’t understand what they were trying to do. Out on the right, the biggest man on the pitch played the entire half as a right winger and the team as a whole seemed frustrated by the fact that there was no target man in the middle. At the other end, Songo’o wasted possibly an even better chance than the one he had already squandered when, from a corner on the Morecambe right on 66 minutes, he headed Nathaniel Knight-Percival’s nod back from the far stick straight at the home goalkeeper. Two minutes later, good link-up play between Sully and Phillips on the right came to nothing but the visitors were still asking all the questions. Seventy-six minutes were on the clock when Vigouroux’s panic-stricken clearance hit an onrushing substitute Brad Lyons in the face and rebounded just wide of his goal. Lucky boy. But with the game looking doomed to be goal-less and the home side looking as if they could play all day and not score, the Shrimps gave them a late Xmas present and did it for them. Just two minutes were left when Orient took a long throw from their right; Halstead came forward to catch the ball then quickly retreated as Knight-Percival’s attempt to head it clear looped over him instead and landed in the back of the net. It got even worse during injury time. The combination of Wilkinson and McAnuff on the right came off at long last and the Skipper’s acute cross was beautifully swept home by Angol. And that was it.
If you don’t take your chances, you don’t win. That’s what happened today. I thought that Orient played better at Morecambe than they did today – and lost. For me, Derek Adams’ over-cautious tactics particularly in the first half threw the game away. The three points pushed the O’s above the visitors into seventh place in League Two. Morecambe disappointingly fell to ninth.
Leyton Orient: 22 Lawrence Vigouroux (Y); 2 Sam Ling; 4 Ousseynou Cissé (26 Hector Kyprianou 55’); 5 Dan Happe; 7 Jobi McAnuff (C); 8 Craig Clay; 9 Connor Wilkinson; 16 James Brophy; 18 Tunji Akinola; 19 Lee Angol (Y); 20 Ruel Sotiriou (Y) (15 Dan Kemp 63’).
Subs not used: 1 Sam Sargeant; 3 Joe Widdowson; 6 Josh Coulson; 11 James Dayton; 17 Louis Dennis.
Morecambe: 12 Mark Halstead; 3 Stephen Hendrie; 4 Nathaniel Knight-Percival; 24 Yann Songo’o; 10 Aaron Wildig; 5 Sam Lavelle (C); 11 Carlos Mendes-Gomes; 20 Adam Phillips (7 Jordan Slew 92’); 21 Ryan Cooney; 9 Cole Stockton (8 Toumani Diagouraga 77’); 16 John O’Sullivan (15 Brad Lyons 72’).
Subs not used: 13 André da Silva Mendes; 2 Kelvin Mellor; 19 Liam McAlinden; 14 Alex Kenyon.
Ref: Brett Huxtable.
