Leyton Orient Football Club - The O's

Leyton Orient FC History

2006-07 Season

20th in League One
League Cup: 1st round; West Bromwich Albion h. 0-3
FA Cup: 2nd round replay; Torquay United h. 1-2
JP Trophy: 2nd round; Bristol City h. 1-3

Highlight:
5-2 win at Millwall, 20/2/07

Low Spot:
1-4 home defeat to Brighton & Hove Albion, 13/2/07

Good:
Matt Lockwood
Classy full back who made the step up to League One as a duck to water. 11 goals left him just one shy of the leading scorer.
Fans must have been happy when he signed a new contract but within weeks the club had flogged him to Nottingham Forest anyway. A fantastic servant for the O's in any case.
Adam Chambers
This competitive player who can operate anywhere down the right hand side was excellent after returning from a year long injury.

In Brief:
This was always likely to be a tough season after winning promotion from League Two the year before and so it proved.
Having won their first two home games the O's went on a horrible run which saw them bottom of the table with a third of the season gone, below even Rotherham who had started with a ten point deduction.
A win over Cheltenham arrested the slide and three straight wins in December, including a mamorable victory at Notts Forest, raised spirits still further.
The clubs' best spell came from late February when they managed 3 wins and 4 draws to climb towards mid table. This spell proved vital as a slump followed which pushed them right back into trouble.
Safety was finally assured after a crucial late win at Bradford City.
There was nothing to suggest that next season won't present a similar challenge, however.

Leyton Orient Football Club History

The early history of Leyton Orient Football Club is a little vague but the favoured date of their formation is 1881 when members of the Homerton Theological College founded a cricket team and in turn began a football team at the end of the summer.

This club was called the Glyn Cricket & Football Club which later changed its name to Eagle FC before becoming Orient FC in 1888. Ten years later the club changed again to become Clapton Orient. Leyton Orient was adopted after the second world war.

Orient was originally chosen as a name because of the large presence within the club of workers from the Orient Shipping Line.

The club was elected into Division Two in 1905 and remained an unobtrusive presence in that division until suffering relegation in 1929.

The highlight of these early years came in 1926 when Orient reached the quarter finals of the FA Cup, enjoying fine victories over Middlesbrough and Newcastle United before coming out on the wrong end of a 6-1 hiding at home to Manchester City.

In 1954 Orient again reached the last eight of the competition and were given a real chance of making the semi finals after being drawn at home to Port Vale.

Vale were running away with the Division Three North section, however, and recorded a 1-0 win at Brisbane Road.

Orient had spent 18 years in Division Three South without managing a top ten finish before finally getting their act together in the mid 1950's.

They finished runners up in 1955, not good enough for promotion under a ridiculously harsh system, but went one better the following season to win back a place in the second division as champions.

Then after five seasons spent simply trying to maintain their Division Two status the club shocked everybody by finishing runners up to win a place in Division One in 1962, behind Liverpool and just in front of Sunderland.

The dream soon turned to reality, however. Orient were relegated immediately and 1962-63 remains the clubs' only ever venture into the top flight.

The club slipped into Division Three in 1966 but won back a Division Two berth in 1970 after winning the third division championship.

Without threatening to win promotion Orient managed to spend the entire decade in England's second tier and enjoyed a couple of notable FA Cup runs.

In 1972 The O's won away at Leicester and beat Chelsea 3-2 at Brisbane Road before losing by the only goal at home to Arsenal in the quarter finals.

Then in 1978 the club went one better and reached the semi finals. Again Chelsea were one of Orient's victims after a 2-1 5th round replay triumph at Stamford Bridge. Unfortunately it was also Arsenal who ended the run, comfortably winning the semi final 3-0.

Peter Kitchen was the hero of this run, scoring seven of the nine goals the side managed in the competition.

Always an unfashionable club in the capital Orient's dependance on selling to survive could not maintain a second division status indefinitely and in 1982 the club was eventually relegated. Stars such as Laurie Cunningham, Glenn Roeder, Tony Grealish and John Chiedozie had all moved on by that time and ultimately the drain of talent could not be overcome.

Orient have not managed a return to that level since and have remained stuck in the leagues' basement for the past decade.

The clubs best effort in the League Cup came way back in 1963 when they made it to the 5th round. The O's recorded excellent victories over Newcastle United and Charlton before losing disappointingly to Bury.

One point of interest in the clubs records is that although Alec Stock is named as Orient's manager for the period 1949-59 he did actually leave the club on two occasions during that time for short, ill fated spells at Arsenal and Roma.

I wonder if Martin Ling is likely to follow in Stock's footsteps at either of those clubs?

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