League 2: Leyton Orient- Newport County
I am very keen on Orient in Kevin Nolan's home debut as player/head coach. He kept himself on the bench at the weekend in a 2-0 away win against promotion hopefuls Wycombe Wanderers, that was his first match in charge and just the O's second win in eleven starts and 3rd in 14 since their 3-1 road loss at Hartlepool back in November, where we sided with the host .........
Early televised kick off, between two teams with very different ambitions. The hosts would probably settle for a season of (lower) mid table consolidation after coming so close to relegation last time round and I doubt they would have too many ambitions beyond that, apart from making the third round of the FA Cup and earning a money spinning tie , but they do not have to worry about that for the time being and it will be all about the league today and collecting one or three much needed points to help them pull away from the drop zone. They have been busy this week and the loan signings of striker Mikael Mandron from neigbouring Sunderland and winger Kai Naismith from Portsmouth are quite eyecatching. Mandron has had good loan spells at lower level before and the season before last I spoke about him shortly after he joined Fleetwood Town, helping them to gain promotion......
I also like the addition of Sunderland's 19 yo French striker Mikael Mandron, who has also joined until the end of the campaign, he has made two appearance off the bench for the Black Cats and after only just being upgraded to the U21 side, has 6 goals in 7 starts. They clearly think a lot of him at the EPL club and want him to get some league experience, he has only played an hour off the bench so far, but has already contributed two assists, he is very quick, has good vision and can hold the ball up, even two of those attributes gives him more than many players at this level.
The fact that Sunderland have persevered with the now 21yo tells you that they feel he has "something" and he is keen to impress his parent club with some league starts and all his Black Cat team mates will be watching this lunchtime. Naismith had a very successful couple of years at Accrington Stanley, which earned him the "big" move to Portsmouth (Pompey have average crowds of about 12-15 times the size of Stanley), but he has yet to find a regular starting spot, so is another player looking to catch the eye of his main employer and it may be that a return North will help the 23 yo Scot. These look two good signings and they will greatly increase offensive options.
Orient have their eyes firmly on an immediate return to League 1 and are a better team than Pool, but the visitors are missing three huge players today , with keeper Alex Cisak away on internation duty ( replacement Charlie Grainger conceded four in his only league start this season ....Cisak just 1.06 per start over the other 15 games), centre back Connor Essam who has missed just 14 minutes of league action this season and Dean Cox who has 5 goals and 7 assists . If you have seen Orient play in recent campaigns, you will know that Cox is absolutely vital to them and the focus of so much of what they do offensively, he had just refound his best form and to lose him with what appears to be a season ending training injury is devastating and might take time for the squad to recover from. Good chance for the hosts who have got all the good news that these two had between them in build up .
Although we got the result we wanted, Orient could have been out of sight early in that game and when things click for them, they are as good as anyone in this division and if they can continue to tighten up at the back, the clean sheet on saturday was the first in eight starts, they can get back into the promotion race. Three points would take them into the playoff spots and would be seen as huge and something to really build on, with another home game on Saturday, followed by matches against two of the top five. Nolan feels the players bought into what he is trying to do very quickly last week and he clearly has their respect. County are very up and down, but are definitely better than their league position of 20th suggests, they have bought a lot of players into the club in the transfer window and are in a transitional stage right now and were two down quickly at home to struggling Dagenham on Saturday, before earning a share of the points and they will probably be stronger in a fortnight , when everyone has bedded in, than they are right now. Huge game for the O's and a potential momentum builder.
