Art of the deal: How Leyton Orient can buy and sell its way to the top

[This piece first ran in Orientear issue 293 and has been lightly updated and expanded with a Q&A with Leyton Orient Chief Operations Officer Steve Tait] Leyton Orient sold Hector Kyprianou to Petersborough United in the summer of 2022 for a reported transfer fee of more than £400,000. Seen by many at the time as …

American investors in London: A Leyton Orient story?

[This piece first ran in Orientear issue 292 and has been lightly updated] I became a Leyton Orient season card holder in 2022, and let me tell you, there have been some dark times. There was that time that Stevenage beat us. And then there was that other time that Richie Wellens got sent off. …

A peak behind the Leyton Orient curtain with a tour of Brisbane Road

Every other Saturday or so (and some Tuesday nights), we are treated to 90 minutes of footballing drama on the stage of Brisbane Road. Sometimes, it's not exactly masterpiece theatre, like Leyton Orient's last home match, a dull 0-0 draw against Port Vale. Other times, it's filled with plot twists galore, like the O's 4-3 …

Leyton Orient building for the future, but the present is now

After a brilliant unbeaten January and a largely satisfying February, the wheels have come off a bit for Leyton Orient. We enter the ides of March on the heels of three straight goalless games for the O's, including Tuesday night's turgid performance against Port Vale, with offence harder to find than Kate Middleton's whereabouts. And …

The transfer window that could’ve been, and the playoff race we’re in

I was sat at my laptop last week, trying to decide what to blog about -- Nigel Travis' livestreamed Q&A from Monday, the methodical win against Blackpool on Tuesday -- when the news broke on Wednesday that Leyton Orient had signed defender Jack Simpson, which honestly threw me for a loop. As the lads on …

Full stadium, full heart: David Dodd, doyen of Leyton Orient Supporters Club

[This piece first ran in Orientear issue 291 in January and has been lightly updated.] Like many of the Leyton Orient Supporters Club volunteers, David Dodd turns up for matchdays around 10 am to start preparing the bar for the pre-game crowd, and well after the final ale is poured and the last fans head …

In Nigel Travis’ legacy project, Leyton Orient seek new investors to level up

The Americans are coming! The Leyton Orient board are on the lookout for deep-pocketed new investors to turbocharge the football club's growth plans, which definitively include getting the squad promoted to the Championship and building a new stadium, with a music venue, hotel and/our housing attached. And it's more likely than not these new backers …

Frustrations ooze out the O’s molehill on the way up the League One mountain

As romance mystery thrillers go, The Challenge Culture: Why the Most Successful Organisations Run on Pushback by Nigel Travis suffers from a rather stodgy plot and a protagonist who seems more interested in running companies than doing anything interesting, like killing his enemies, solving lurid crimes or leading on a bevy of love interests. But …

Hard truths on the balance sheet: what to make of LOFC’s financial statements

Leyton Orient Football Club on 19 January revealed an operating loss of £3.9 million for the 2022-23 season. Lest we forget, that was a year in which the O's won the League Two title and played in front of a regularly sold-out Brisbane Road. That comes out to a sobering £10,685 daily loss, money that …

Diary of a Leyton Orient awayday: My first time

At some point on Saturday -- maybe it was when Leyton Orient scored the first goal against Portsmouth, or it might have been when the O’s went up 2-0, or possibly after goalkeeper Sol Brynn saved a penalty, or it could have been after we took a 3-0 lead, I’m not sure, because the whole …