Four forty five on a Saturday afternoon can be a pretty terrifying, frustrating, glorious time to be an Orient fan and this week was no different.

In what was expected to be a straightforward win over Accrington Stanley (who are they?.. exactly), we saw the most disappointing performance of the season as the O’s slipped to a 1-0 home defeat.

After a decent win last week against Morecambe, Saturday saw poor finishing, misplaced passes, naive defending and route one football which just didn’t work against a well drilled League Two team.

Losing to Accrington Stanley is one of those things an Orient fan shouldn’t be saying, but it has happened following a very poor display. With boos ringing round the Matchroom Stadium at full time as well as some calling for Ian Hendon to quit, this season is 15 games in and is already proving very frustrating.

Eleven points from our past 11 games doesn’t exactly inspire confidence or give comfort to many Orient fans who are expecting promotion at the first time of asking. However, the top of League 2 is quite a tight affair and one win will help you jump a couple of places, until the following week that is.

Which makes this all the more frustrating as already this season points have been dropped which shouldn’t have been and we really should be out of sight at the top of the league, especially when you consider we have an international goalkeeper, the leading assist midfielder in the Football League over the last four seasons in Dean Cox and the hottest striker in the league in Jay Simpson.

So what has gone wrong for Hendon?

A lack of consistency for starters as too many points have been dropped this season both home and away.

The “diamond” formation that Hendon prefers to use does not bring out the best in the players, for example it doesn’t suit Dean Cox or Lloyd James, who are both very good League One players who can’t get into the team for this reason. But what is the alternative? When Hendon did go 4-4-2 with wingers it was awful and we were 2-0 down by half time, only to go back to the diamond and rescue a point.

Players switching off - never so evident as of this weekend. Shambolic defending and wasted opportunities up front again cost us this week as they have done all season. Mathieu Baudry is our captain and needs to step up and tell the team to concentrate all through the match as generally we tend to dominate early spells, miss early chances that we should score, concede a sloppy goal and then have to fight in the second half for a point.

Players not listening to pre match warnings/instructions (according to Hendon).

Dressing room issues, has he lost the players? Jobi McAnuff being totally frozen out and Dean Cox missing two games for no apparent reason suggest that all may not be well in the dressing room.

Squad size - a lot of criticism is being fired at Hendon due to the size of the squad, and to be fair he has recognised this and bought in loan signings. We expect there will be more signings to come in January to bolster our promotion push. But we need to ensure our loan signings are better than what we have.

Although nobody is happy with the above, we feel that Ian Hendon and his vastly experienced team need more time and us fans need to be patient. He has a good, experienced team around him who will be giving him good advice and guiding him. All too often fans call for the manager’s head when things aren’t clicking, but looking back who would you prefer, Fabio Liverani? Realistically who do O’s fans want or who would they expect to get at this stage of the season?

We think patience is the key. For those fans who were there on Saturday, you can’t blame Hendon for the chances strikers are missing from a couple of yards out (Ollie Palmer really should have scored early in the second half), poor passing from experienced players (pretty much all of them on Saturday) or a defender claiming offside and almost stopping when the attacking player is clearly on side.

He’s only responsible for so much, the rest is down to the professional players. Hendon's not stupid, he sees these things as well and ordered the players in for extra training on Sunday and expect the changes to come out for our next league match.

Hendon is a good young English manager, and this is the type of boss Orient fans wanted after the disaster which was last season. He has played for Orient and knows what it means to wear the shirt. He also isn’t afraid to make big decisions and change tactics around in matches when things aren’t going our way.

We won the first five matches this season and there’s nothing to suggest with the squad at Hendon’s disposal we can’t go on another decent run again and win another five on the bounce. Life as an Orient fan is never boring and why would it be now we are in League 2?

The season isn’t a write off yet and we are in a play-off place, so as always let’s sing up and get behind the team.

Ian Hendon’s red and white army!

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