Having followed my beloved Leyton Orient around the country every other week for 20 years with my Dad, we tend to be experts on most of the grounds, or stadia as they are now known, due to Orient flitting between the bottom two tiers since the early 80s.

Like most avid supporters we have a pre-match routine that is performed in the hours leading up to the game as we anticipate what the outcome will be at 5pm. The journey usually begins with dissecting the previous match; who played well, who didn’t, arguing about refereeing decisions and disagreeing with substitutions that should or shouldn’t have been made.

Our attention is then turned to today’s all important match; can we win the game? What tactics will we use? What will the team be? And of course the all important question, what is the venue for our pre-match drink?

In recent weeks, due to the numerous rumours, confusing decisions and unexpected departures at Orient, the routine has changed (something which is very unusual).

Mid-September my Dad and I travelled together, as we always do, to Notts County where the main topic of discussion was about chairman Francesco Becchetti’s shock announcement that Russell Slade had one game to save his job. I don’t think we even discussed what the expected line up would be, or where in the table we could climb to if we won the game. We simply talked about our dismay at Becchetti’s comments, which we found very unfair, and that we prayed the team would get the result for Slade.

Four days later we travelled up the A1 once again to Scunthorpe United. This time the hot topic of conversation was the developments the previous evening that Russell Slade was now the favourite for the Cardiff job. Did we believe the comments? Where had they come from? Was he still in the firing line for the sack at Orient?

We discussed the scenes at the end of Tuesday’s match at Notts County but still there was no discussion of how the team had played or how we thought we might play at Scunthorpe. Off the pitch matters were taking over, something that we are not used to at Leyton Orient.

On Saturday we travelled to Bramall Lane, home of Sheffield United, a game that is usually one to look out for when the fixture list is released. The large stadium and guaranteed big crowd normally make it a good day out. We were still unbeaten away in all competitions and it is somewhere that we have always played well in the past, even if we haven’t got the result.

The pre-match routine was still out of sync as attentions in the car turn to the manager vacancy at Brisbane Road. Who might be in the running and who would we be happy to see in charge of our football club? Several names were thrown into the hat but the general consensus was that we would prefer someone who has been successful in the Football League like Chris Hughton rather than just a big name like Paul Ince.

We arrived at the pub at 1.30 and drank our usual pre-match drinks while we discussed what we thought the line-up should be and what the line-up would actually be (on a lot of occasions these are two very different things).

At about 2pm I read out the team as announced on the Leyton Orient twitter feed, we were pleased to see that Jay Simpson was starting as we felt he deserved it, and were disappointed that Dean Cox was not in the team due to injury.

We always make our predictions before the game. Dad thought we would get a draw and rather pessimistically for me, I said I didn’t think we would win the game. When we arrived at Bramall Lane with 15 minutes to kick off there was an upbeat atmosphere, we took our seats behind the goal, and, as we do every week hoped that it was going to be our day.

After a shaky start, when the Blades could have taken the lead within the first minute, we won a few corners although nothing came of them. The game then settled down and both sides passed the ball about mainly in midfield.

I was hoping we could see the game out until half-time and then maybe nick one in the second half, however with just over five minutes to go until the break Simpson tapped home from close range to put us ahead at half-time.

During the interval we discussed what we thought needed to change in the second half, we felt that we were relying too much on the long ball to Darius Henderson which wasn’t proving effective and that we could benefit from more pace and movement up front. We have felt this to be the case in a few matches.

There is no other way to describe the second half than a complete 'backs to the walls' job. There were some real heart-stopping moments from off-the-line clearances, to goal-mouth scrambles.

With 20 minutes or so to go, I made the fatal mistake of thinking to myself that we may actually hold on for the vital three points, if only. Minutes later Jobi McAnuff received his second yellow card of the game and was sent off, which I don’t think he could have any complaints about. Meanwhile now that we were down to ten men everyone in the away end knew what was about to follow.

The final 15 minutes saw a complete onslaught from Sheffield United. We all felt it was only a matter of time until the three points would be taken from us. On 89 minutes as the fourth official prepared to put the board up for injury time and with the home fans starting to pile out of the ground, the inevitable happened, it was now 1-1. Our fears of now coming away with nothing were made worse when to our dismay seven minutes of injury time were to be added on.

I genuinely couldn’t see how we were going to see out the remaining time without conceding again, especially as the Sheffield United players were now so fired up and the fans in full voice.

Just one minute later, our fears were realised when Marc McNulty headed home to take what looked like all three points. Three quarters of the ground completely erupted with joy whilst myself and the 600 travelling fans around me held our heads in our hands. Completely gutted.

During the five minutes that followed, caretaker manager Kevin Nugent received some seriously nasty abuse from fans sitting around me and on social media, and I have to say I felt it was completely uncalled for. In my opinion he has been a fundamental part of our football club for nine years, under three different managers, not to mention his spells as a player, and I felt it was really out of line.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Nugent is the answer as our full time manager but the way I see it is he is trying to do his best in a very difficult situation and Bramall Lane is a difficult place to come to at the best of times.

Meanwhile, with 90 plus nine minutes on the clock we had a last gasp chance when we won a corner which Romain Vincelot headed in to send the away end right in front of him into absolute euphoria and left the Sheffield United players a bit shell shocked. I think they thought they had done enough. We were now so grateful for those seven minutes of injury time, although I still have no idea what they were for.

On balance I felt we deserved the point, we battled so hard, especially the defence and our never-say-die attitude certainly paid off. I think we have been due a bit of luck and we got it.

The journey home was a lot more upbeat than it looked to be at ten to five. Our unbeaten away record in all competitions was still intact, and I suppose in the end it almost felt like we had won the game.

It’s hard to say if the managerial ‘saga’ will be sorted for the next away game or even by the time we play MK Dons on Saturday. However one thing is for sure, we know that a week on Saturday we will be travelling to Port Vale, with the same routine and the same hope we always do to support the O's which is the most important thing of all.