Orient's Manager Not Pleased!.

By: Bill Osborne
Date: 17/01/2005

MARTIN Ling was far from happy with his side's performance at Brisbane Road on Saturday. "It's another poor home performance, he moaned. "The last 20 minutes doesn't mask it for me - we were a shambles in the first half, not at the races and the second half still wasn't good enough."

"They would have gone more up if it wasn't for Lee Harrison and there are a few questions to be asked about my players in my head. "I don't want to make any rash decisions but there is some thinking time needed if I want to get things right."

"If you don't ask the opposition any questions you don't get anywhere and in the first half we didn't have enough passion. Our forwards never got on the ball and only Daryl McMahon opened up their defence a little bit - it's not enough from your top six. We're being opened up too easily at the moment and it's maybe either a change of personnel or change of system to get it right."

"It's easy to see we don't like playing at home - we do things well away from home but we're probably in the bottom four on our home record I'm guessing. It's maybe time I did what I'm asking of my players and change some things around to get results - I'll have a good think about it but it may be time for a change because we're getting cut open too easily and not creating enough."

On the two young subs Efe Echanomi and Derek Duncan he said; "I wish some of the senior players would look at them - and that's what I've said to them. They will muck up sometimes but they'll give it a go and try to do something positive. The scholarship boys have played 60 games between them and not let anyone down - at the moment some of my seniors are letting me down so I'm not going to level any blame at those two."

But Russell Slade felt his tactics had paid off. "I think that is a game that we might have drawn three months ago. Despite what one or two might say, I do believe and my players believe that we are going in the right direction and we are improving.

"We came here with a team shape that enabled us to break quickly on the counter attack with the pace of Michael Reddy and Andy Parkinson, and the way we played was highlighted by the goals we scored." But Slade said that his side shouldn't have been hanging on at the end.

"I don't think we should have been in that situation. We were having to fight to keep the lead. Parky had a chance to seal the game and he will be disappointed with that. You have to remember that Orient are only one slot outside the play-offs, so at some stage they are going to have a go at you."

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