1. Defender is ashamed
after drubbing in cup
Cavasin
calls for
strength
Receiving a bad beating: the O’s after conceding the fifth goal on Sunday. Pictures: SIMON O’CONNOR
CALLUM Kennedy admitted he felt
embarrassed after Leyton Orient
fell to a 6-0 defeat at the hands of
Sheffield United in the FA Cup first
round on Sunday.
A hat-trick from Harry Chapman
and one apiece from Chris Basham,
Stefan Scougall and Kieron Free-
man were enough to see the O’s fall
to their heaviest defeat in 34 years.
Alberto Cavasin arrived at E10 at
the beginning of last month and has
so far only recorded one win out of
six games.
Kennedy said: “I am embarrassed
for myself, embarrassed for the
team but most of all I am embar-
rassed for the fans.
“I think I’d be furious as a fan if
I’d travelled up, paid good money
and spent a Sunday that I could
have been with my family to come
and watch that, I’d be raging. They
have got every right to feel the same
way we do.”
Orient failed to get out of the start-
ing blocks while the Blades showed
their complete dominance over the
League Two side.
But this result is not a one-off; the
O’s are currently 23rd in the table
following a string of bad results.
When asked where he thinks the
ALBERTO Cavasin feels his side
were not ready for Sheffield United
after Leyton Orient conceded six
goals without reply for the first time
in 34 years on Sunday.
A hat-trick from Harry Chapman
and efforts from Chris Basham, Ki-
eron Freeman and Stefan Scougall
saw Orient dismantled in the FA Cup
first round.
Set pieces were once again their
downfall as four of the six goals the
O’s conceded came from free-kicks
and corners.
Cavasin said: “It was a very bad per-
formance. We were not ready for the
situation.
“You can lose against a stronger
opponent but conceding four goals
from set pieces and not having an ad-
equate reaction isn’t a performance
good enough for us.”
Set pieces have been a problem for
the O’s for some time as when Ian
Hendon was in charge he also noted
how they struggled to defend them.
Cavasin has now lost five of his
six games in charge and asked why
set pieces were still a problem for
his side, the 60-year-old said: “We do
perfect training sessions during the
week.
“The players work hard, follow, get
ready and under this aspect you can-
not ask more from them.
“And on Saturdays if it is not one
thing, it is the other.”
The Italian boss went on to explain
why he kept the players inside the
dressing room for some time to dis-
cuss their performance overall.
“Like last week (when they lost 2-0
to Crewe at Brisbane Road), the rela-
tionship among the team and among
my staff are almost without a role,”
said the former Sampdoria boss.
“There is not a problem with con-
fronting each other. The players are
sad, sad.
“Basically they are saying what I
said before, that all week we do really
well and have good ideas. But when
we concede a goal we do not react.
This is almost becoming a habit.
“We said this to each other but it is
up to us to believe and go past it. Do
not lose ourselves in these moments.
“Do not take anything from the
past, the supporters are here. But it
is up to us. It is us that are the main
characters out there.
“The squad is made up of good
men, good professionals. So we have
to be the main characters of the next
match.
“There is something more we have
to do, something more on the pitch.
But maybe the thing we have to do
more of is to find some strength to
get over this and get past the situa-
tion.”
We’re headed for shameful oblivion
MY daughter turns one next week.
Not a seismic event, but I’m proud
to say Amélie has already graced
the stands at Brisbane Road, writes
Fan’s View columnist Matt Arnot.
Once I fended off the inevitable
quips about calls to social servic-
es, we watched the match without
too many wriggles and managed a
photo with Theo the Wyverne. She
turned out to be a lucky mascot as
Orient actually scored a goal. We
still lost, of course, but at least it
was in a slightly less appalling man-
ner than has become custom.
With seven losses from eight
league matches the O’s are already
staring a new record for home de-
feats– that could spell the end of our
111 years in the Football League.
Only Nigel Atangana and Alex
Cisak have regularly risen above
the morass of ineptitude served up
during pitiful defeats to the likes of
Newport, Mansfield and Yeovil.
But our home woes have paled in
comparison to the shiny new nadir
of Sunday’s FA Cup capitulation
against Sheffield. It’s one thing to
gallantly fall to a higher division
outfit, but another to be swept aside
by a semi-reserve team without a
recognised striker who barely had
to break sweat to score six patheti-
cally-defended goals. I wasn’t even
born the last time Orient lost a fix-
ture this heavily.
Callum Kennedy has received
praise from some quarters for his
overtly apologetic post-match com-
ments, but his statements along the
lines of ‘we’ve got to work hard’ and
‘we need a reaction’ are identical to
the meaningless platitudes of play-
er interviews during our relegation
season in 2014/15.
Indeed, the similarities are strik-
ing: an expensively-assembled
squad failing to find a scintilla of
cohesion, wandering about whilst
an Italian manager unable to com-
municate with his players outside
of flailing his arms like a demented
windmill leads the side to one igno-
minious capitulation after another.
The obvious first step would be to
fire the hapless Alberto Cavasin,
whose last genuinely successful
season as a football manager was
17 years ago. But his ludicrous ap-
pointment is merely a symptom of
the shambolic way the club is being
run at boardroom level.
There has to come a point where
someone has made so many bad
decisions he shouldn’t be making
them, and chairman Francesco Bec-
chetti’s unending incompetence has
not only overseen our fall from (rel-
ative) grace on the pitch, but also a
litany of embarrassing headlines
and millions of pounds of debt.
With mutiny growing, the likeli-
hood of LOFT-orchestrated protests
and the club teetering precariously
KENNEDY: ‘I’d be raging’ if I was an Orient fan
BOSSADMITSFAILURETOREACTTO
CONCEDINGISBECOMINGAHABIT
FINGERPOINTEDATMENTALITYAFTER
MORESET-PIECEFAILINGSFORO’S
on the edge of oblivion, it will be
some time before Amélie returns.
For a club which prides itself on
being a family-friendly club, that’s
a sad state of affairs indeed.
problems lie, the former AFC Wim-
bledon player added: “When you
start losing games it becomes a hab-
it, just like when you are winning
games you have a positive mindset.
“Every time you go on and score
a goal you imagine you can go on
and win by two or three nil. And
when you concede I think there
are elements of people in our team,
they get that feeling of ‘here we go
again.’
“The only way I know out of that
is by digging your heels in and
working extremely hard to put
things right.”
Cavasin said after the O’s 3-1 win
at Hartlepool he was working with
his players to try a new system of
zonal marking.
Set plays have remained a prob-
lem for the side as each week they
fall to goals from corners or free-
kicks.
“Obviously as it stands, all season,
even when we were not zonal we
were conceding from set pieces,”
said the 26-year-old.
“Today four of the six goals came
from set pieces. Of course everyone
is going to turn to the zonal mark-
ing but I keep talking about our
mentality.
“From a set piece, it doesn’t mat-
ter if you are zonal or man mark-
ing, there has to be an idea of they
cannot score from this.
“If we are not scoring from our
set plays why should anyone score
against us? And I included, hands
up, I have made mistakes and I have
played parts in goals conceded and
it is not good enough. Simple.
“That is the be all and end all of
it. It is not good enough and it needs
to change because set pieces play a
huge factor in where you are at the
end of the season.
“If you do not address that then
things are not going to get any bet-
ter.”
SPORT
70 November 10, 2016 guardian-series.co.uk
The O’s fans in Sheffield