My daughter turns one next week. Not exactly a seismic event, but I’m proud to say that Amélie has already graced the stands at Brisbane Road, writes Fans Writer Matt Arnot. 

Once I successfully fended off the inevitable quips about calls to Social Services, we watched the match without too many wriggles and managed the obligatory photo op with Theo the Wyvern at half time.

She even turned out to be something of a lucky mascot herself as her attendance coincided with Orient actually scoring a goal.

We still lost, of course, but at least it was in a slightly less appalling manner than has become the custom for home games in recent months.

With seven losses from eight league matches in E10, The O’s are already staring a new club record for home defeats in a season full in the face – a record that, if realised come early May, will surely spell the end of our 111-year stay 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.

However, our multitudinous home woes have paled in comparison to the shiny new nadir of Sunday’s FA Cup capitulation against Sheffield United.

Now it’s one thing to gallantly fall to a more accomplished higher division outfit, but it’s quite another to be swept aside without a whimper by a semi-reserve team without a recognised striker who barely had to break sweat to score six of the most pathetically-defended goals you are ever likely to see.

Earlier in this article I talked about bringing my littl’un to a game, but I wasn’t even born the last time Orient lost a fixture this heavily, let alone in attendance.

Callum Kennedy has received praise from some quarters for his overtly apologetic post-match comments, but worryingly his statements along the lines of: ‘We’ve got to work hard’ and ‘We need a reaction’ are identical to the meaningless platitudes that became indicative of player interviews during our relegation season in 2014/15.

Indeed, the similarities between the two seasons are striking: an expensively-assembled squad failing to find a scintilla of cohesion, wandering about fecklessly whilst an Italian manager unable to communicate with his players outside of flailing his arms like a demented windmill leads the side to one ignominious capitulation after another.

Whilst the obvious first step would be to fire the hapless Alberto Cavasin – whose last genuinely successful season as a football manager was an astonishing 17 years ago – his ludicrous appointment 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 that you have to accept that he shouldn’t be making them, and this is the conclusion that many O’s fans have reached with Orient chairman, Francesco Becchetti.

His seemingly unending incompetence has not only overseen our fall from (relative) grace on the pitch, but also a litany of embarrassing headlines and the accrual of millions of pounds of debt in the form of loans away from it.

With open mutiny growing in the stands, the likelihood of LOFT-orchestrated protests and the club teetering precariously on the edge of financial and footballing oblivion, it will almost certainly be some time before Amélie makes her sophomore appearance in Leyton.

And for a club which prides itself on being a family-friendly community club, that’s a sad state of affairs indeed.