A new season of English football has begun, and I have been slow on restarting my tour of London football grounds. October rolled around and an opportunity presented itself, and so Zac and I headed to E10, and Leyton Orient. The game was a thrilling London derby between Leyton Orient and Brentford.
Getting to the ground was fairly easy, a short walk from Leyton on the central line. Certainly a change from the bigger grounds, with not really a sense that there was a game on, and you only knew the ground was there once you were right outside. The ground is a fairly small capacity, about 9,000, which made for a cosy feel to the ground. The Brentford fans filled half of the main stands, which provided a good boost to the overall atmosphere. The ground was undergoing a bit of development, but mainly in building apartment blocks around the corners of the ground. One of the key pieces of marketing was advertising the apartments as having a great match day view. This had already been taken up by a few fans, with their view over the pitch looking pretty good. Though the value of the view probably isn’t too high given the low price of a season ticket.
To enliven our match day experience, Zac and I placed a small £10 wager on Leyton to win, adding that touch of interest into the match and really made us care about the result.
Another piece of commercial acumen shown by the team at Leyton Orient was the selling of a unique matchday experience. It appeared as if the match day mascots were two 40 or 50+ guys, who came out running out with the teams and joined in a bit of kickabout. What gave the game away, aside from their touch was their extreme beer bellies. In the photo below they are the two to the immediate right of the referees.
The game itself was a great example of the results based tactics of the Football league. On many an occasion for goal kicks and free kicks, all 20 outfield players were in a 20 m by 20 m square.
While the players were undoubtedly highly skilled, the desire to get results led to the tactic of pumping it forward to the central striker who would then try to play it off to players running off. What was interesting was the two different types of target men used, Brentford had the very tall and strong Carl Cort (former Premier league level), who had a natural advantage in receiving the ball, where Leyton employed a reasonably short player McGleish who had an outstanding leap and would always manage to get a touch on it.
Brentford went 1-0 up after a pretty dominant 15 mins, and it was not looking good for Leyton as after 25 mins they were awarded a penalty that was missed. But a change of tactics, switching the wide midfielders bought them back into it, and they levelled it up before half-time with a great finish from McGleish. The first half was fairly ho-hum in intensity, but after half time it really stepped up, and Leyton were all over Brentford, and took the lead when a cross came over and the Brentford right back put it into the back of his own net. Leyton sat back for the last 20 mins, causing a bit of anxiety, but were safely home. In general I was very impressed by Jimmy Smith a central midfielder for Leyton and the left back Ryan Dickson for Brentford.
Another good game to go to, and the home victory nicely subsidised the day out.
So that leaves the following team to go visit : West Ham, Tottenham, Crystal Palace, Watford, QPR, Brentford and Dagenham and Redbridge.
Getting to the ground was fairly easy, a short walk from Leyton on the central line. Certainly a change from the bigger grounds, with not really a sense that there was a game on, and you only knew the ground was there once you were right outside. The ground is a fairly small capacity, about 9,000, which made for a cosy feel to the ground. The Brentford fans filled half of the main stands, which provided a good boost to the overall atmosphere. The ground was undergoing a bit of development, but mainly in building apartment blocks around the corners of the ground. One of the key pieces of marketing was advertising the apartments as having a great match day view. This had already been taken up by a few fans, with their view over the pitch looking pretty good. Though the value of the view probably isn’t too high given the low price of a season ticket.
To enliven our match day experience, Zac and I placed a small £10 wager on Leyton to win, adding that touch of interest into the match and really made us care about the result.
Another piece of commercial acumen shown by the team at Leyton Orient was the selling of a unique matchday experience. It appeared as if the match day mascots were two 40 or 50+ guys, who came out running out with the teams and joined in a bit of kickabout. What gave the game away, aside from their touch was their extreme beer bellies. In the photo below they are the two to the immediate right of the referees.
The game itself was a great example of the results based tactics of the Football league. On many an occasion for goal kicks and free kicks, all 20 outfield players were in a 20 m by 20 m square.
While the players were undoubtedly highly skilled, the desire to get results led to the tactic of pumping it forward to the central striker who would then try to play it off to players running off. What was interesting was the two different types of target men used, Brentford had the very tall and strong Carl Cort (former Premier league level), who had a natural advantage in receiving the ball, where Leyton employed a reasonably short player McGleish who had an outstanding leap and would always manage to get a touch on it.
Brentford went 1-0 up after a pretty dominant 15 mins, and it was not looking good for Leyton as after 25 mins they were awarded a penalty that was missed. But a change of tactics, switching the wide midfielders bought them back into it, and they levelled it up before half-time with a great finish from McGleish. The first half was fairly ho-hum in intensity, but after half time it really stepped up, and Leyton were all over Brentford, and took the lead when a cross came over and the Brentford right back put it into the back of his own net. Leyton sat back for the last 20 mins, causing a bit of anxiety, but were safely home. In general I was very impressed by Jimmy Smith a central midfielder for Leyton and the left back Ryan Dickson for Brentford.
Another good game to go to, and the home victory nicely subsidised the day out.
So that leaves the following team to go visit : West Ham, Tottenham, Crystal Palace, Watford, QPR, Brentford and Dagenham and Redbridge.
