You can forgive Orient fans for feeling a sense of déjà vu as the final whistle blew to confirm their goalless draw with Northampton Town. Richie Wellens’ team has suffered a recent dip in form reminiscent of the club’s fortunes at a similar stage this time last season.
Kenny Jackett’s Orient team started the last campaign brightly before losing their Midas touch in mid-Autumn. The coaching staff may have changed since then but as the capacity crowd inside Brisbane Road watched The O’s struggle to break down a 10-man Northampton team, that familiar sinking feeling will have come rushing back.
First-Half Frustrations
The Orient fans hadn’t felt that way earlier in the afternoon, in fact it had felt as if the match had swung decisively in their favour when Northampton midfielder Ben Fox was controversially shown a straight red card shortly after the half time whistle. But Fox’s red only served to add more steel to a Northampton defence that, buoyed by the raucous away support, seemed determined to preserve their clean sheet in defiance the injustice that they felt.
The visitors’ second half conservatism made it easy to forget that they had started the match far more proactively. Northampton’s high press disrupted Orient’s usually patient build up play at source and Jon Brady’s team almost scored an early goal when Ali Koiki sent a daisy cutter inches wide of Lawrence Vigouroux’s far post. Mark Leonard was next to try his luck, but he blazed his effort over the crossbar after winning the ball high up the pitch.
The Cobblers, playing in the injury-enforced absence of star forward Sam Hoskins, couldn’t make their early pressure pay and were eventually pushed back as Orient began to find a foothold in the game. The O’s main attacking threat came down the right wing as Theo Archibald repeatedly got the better of Northampton left back Ali Koiki, but the Scotsman couldn’t show enough quality in the final third to put his side ahead before the half.
Second-Half Struggles
If the game was simmering along nicely during the first 45 then it began to boil over right at the start of the second half, so quickly, in fact, that any supporter who showed tardiness in returning to their seats after the interval would have missed the game’s big talking point. In what seemed a fairly innocuous, albeit full-blooded tackle, Northampton midfielder Ben Fox lunged after his own loose touch and collided with Jordan Brown just inside the Orient half of the pitch. Referee Ollie Yates had issued 45 yellow cards without feeling the need to reach for a red one this season, but he broke his duckas he gave the incredulous midfielder his marching orders.
Fox’s red inevitably forced his team to cede almost total control of possession to the home side as Orient spent the rest of the afternoon shifting the ball from one wing to another, probing the Northampton back line in search of a weakness to exploit.
At times, Northampton’s 10 men retreated so far inside their own half that you could measure their average positions with a depth gauge, their rear-guard action stopped the O’s from finding space in behind their back line and restricted Wellens’ side to speculative efforts.
Eventually, it began to seem impossible that Orient would find a way to score past such a determined and organised opponent, and so it proved as the referee’s full-time whistle stretched Orient’s winless run to three.
Edited by: Joshkun Salih
