"Now everything I ever done, was only done for you"
With Orient's forward momentum stalled on and off the pitch, the Club convened another Fans' Forum to ventilate some of the discontent. And we had two of our best people there...
It’s 21st November 2024, and Leyton Orient Chairman Nigel Travis, CEO Mark Devlin, COO Steve Tait and Media & Comms Head George Jones are holding online court for 90 minutes, answering an array of supporter-submitted questions, ranging from the impact of Donald Trump to the player budget to tackling racism/homophobia/sexism to Theo Archibald’s injury.
Unlike last season’s forum, in which Travis revealed that a search for new investors was underway to help drive the O’s to the Championship, there was no grand announcement this time, more just a chance for the club to catch up with its supporters, as Tait told me. The forum was livestreamed on YouTube and attended by representatives of the club’s various supporters groups and fan-led media, including the Orientear, LOFT, LOSC, RainbOs, Saltire Orient and Pandamonium. April Smith, the club’s new supporter liaison officer, also was in attendance.
Above: never mind Celebrity Squares, it’s the Leyton Orient Fans’ Forum!
Pre-submitted questions from the fanbase at large were answered, and then for the final 15 minutes or so, the floor was opened to the attendees for questions. The Orientear presubmitted five questions, and to the club’s credit, they answered them all and also took follow-up questions from myself and Ruth, who were repping the fanzine.
Not a huge amount of new ground was broken, but there were some interesting answers. You can view a replay of the forum here, but below are five key major themes from the event.
RECRUITMENT
Travis said a few times during the forum that he feels the player recruitment has to improve, after a couple of lacklustre transfer windows. Perhaps Martin Ling has been put on notice. Devlin and Tait did clarify that the player budget has gone up 17-18% year-on-year, from an original intent of 10%, so the board are putting in more money, but how that money is being used is an area that is being scrutinised.
As for the January window, expect one of the six loanees on the squad to be converted to a permanent signing, while some of the underperforming loanees will be sent back, Travis said. So let the speculation swirl on who those might be. (My money is on forward Charlie Kelman from QPR being the permanent signing, though if you read the latest Orientear where we interviewed goalkeeper coach Simon Royce, you’ll know that we were close to signing Josh Keeley before Tottenham extended his contract and we got him on loan, so it could be him.)
Travis: “I don't think we've done well enough so far this year on bringing in players. Our recruitment does need to improve. It's constantly under review. But I would point out that I think we do have a lot of talent in our side, people like Ethan Galbraith, Ollie O'Neil, Brandon Cooper, Zech Obiero -- and we are planning very hard for the January window.”
Devlin: “The club received some benchmarking data recently, which anonymizes the clubs, except your own club, and Steve and I have been speaking to some of our colleagues at other clubs. And it shows that our playing budget ranks as 15th in the league. So it depends how you look at whether that ranks as one of the smallest or whether that's more in the middling side of things.”
Tait: “The benchmarking also said that teams that are in League One this year but were also in League One the prior season, the average increase in their playing budget was 9%. So when Mark talks about 18%, you can see we're significantly outstripping the average growth year-on-year in the League One teams from last year. But we do recognize that the teams coming up from League Two were going to have significant spending power, along with the teams coming down from the Championship, and we needed to be on the front foot when it came to recruitment.”
CLUB FINANCES
Leyton Orient is a club that reported a loss of £3.9 million in the 2022-23 fiscal year, which covered the season in which the O’s won the League Two title. The officials at the forum acknowledged the fan complaints about higher ticket prices and the increase in commercialisation of the club, but said it’s all in an effort to narrow the losses and make the O’s more financially sustainable.
Some modest progress is being made, Tait said, with that loss likely to come down by about £300,000 to £400,000 when the 2023-24 fiscal results are finalised and made public in a couple of months. That is the result of, yes, the increased commercial revenue from things like corporate sponsorships, stadium naming rights and pitch hires, but also higher income from being in League One – offset by a higher player budget.
For this current 2024-25 season, there’s an additional £400,000 or so from the Sky TV deal – which has caused a few of the O’s kick-off times to be moved -- and a few more commercial deals, but some of that will be cancelled out by the loss of some £170,000 to £200,000 as a result of Saturday home matches being moved due to international breaks.
Devlin: “Every other club is suffering in the same way from TV games, particularly those teams that have had lots of games move for TV. It's a continual challenge. So we are going to have to come up with a much more agile season ticket process and policy next year. We're going to look to try and be as creative as possible with that next year. We put our prices up to a level that we felt we needed to. Have we put them up slightly too high? Some people would argue maybe that is the case. And I perhaps have a little bit of sympathy for that. But please bear in mind, we are trying to run a business here that doesn't go out of business. And so we do try to price things to ensure that the club has enough revenue coming in, both commercially and from a ticketing point of view and a retail point of view. So it's difficult to balance all of those things with being ambitious and having an ambitious playing budget.”
NEW STADIUM AND INVESTORS
Work continues apace on finding a new stadium site, with four locations under consideration and talks ongoing between the club and Waltham Forest council, Devlin said. The council have finally been satisfied that Brisbane Road’s capacity can not be materially increased in a practical way, so it has agreed to work with the club on finding a site within the borough and ideally within Leyton for a new build.
Not much yet to update, either, on the search for new investors, even though many other clubs seem to be signing up wealthy American benefactors.
As for Orient’s current investors, a certain Coley Parry remains in the hotseat over his involvement in Dutch football club Vitesse, including significant doubts over his financial wherewithal. Travis, however, said “there’s nothing I see that is concerning in his dealings with Leyton Orient”, that the money Parry put into the club predated his involvement with Vitesse, and the EFL has been satisfied that all is above board.
On the topic of Trump’s win in the US election and any potential impact on the football industry and Leyton Orient, Travis mused that the Trump administration might encourage more M&A activity, which could help the club be more attractive to investors, but his threat to impose a raft of tariffs on a range of goods could make doing business more expensive. Overall, though, it is hard to see any major trickle-down effects on Orient.
Devlin: “What we have is the will of the council that want to retain the club within the borough. They really want us to stay within Leyton, which, again, is our aspiration as well. We've got their senior team working with us, and we have regular six-week meetings with them where we inch forward in our conversations. But not all of the sites that we're looking at are owned by the council, so there are other people involved, and that can confuse matters and delay matters. Planning in London is never straightforward, although obviously, the council have been very positive in their conversations.”
Travis: “We're trying to bring in investment, [and] I'm actually quite enthusiastic about the number of people we're talking to. Our goal, just so you know, is to have probably three, four, five people that we can put together competitively and make sure they're the right fit in terms of their desire to run a football club appropriately. It's not just the league that has a director's test. We effectively have one as well. And so far, so good … And I also want to underscore what Mark said that if we can reduce the losses, obviously, it makes it easier to bring in new investors because some people are shocked when they see how much football clubs lose. A fact that a lot of people don't like is that 80 out of 92 Premier League and EFL clubs lose money. So if you're out selling it, it's not necessarily the most attractive proposition. But I'm confident we will get more investment.”
Above: laiiiid back - with my mind on my money and my money on my mind…
CLUB CULTURE
Jewish supporter group MeshuganOs, LGBTQ+ group RainbOs and South Asian group PunjabiOs submitted a joint question asking the club – well challenging the club, really – to do better on policing racist/homophobic/sexist comments made both in the stadium and in online forums and social media.
The Orientear asked the club what it was doing to discourage the singing of the misogynistic and juvenile “East London is wonderful” song, which persists at Leyton Orient despite other East London clubs managing to largely eradicate it from their fan playlists.
To both questions, Devlin said the club is working with Kick It Out, Her Game Too and other football diversity initiatives for advice on combatting abhorrent supporter behaviour. But the lack of action from Orient on things like the East London song has been a major source of frustration for many fans, and it’s something that we certainly plan to keep pressuring the club over.
Devlin was also asked by LOFT whether Orient will follow through with its published commitment to introduce a fan advisory board – an item of heightened importance given the board’s search for new club investors and the previous experience with the Italian regime.
He said he has yet to work out how such a board would engage with senior club leaders but will sit down with supporter groups to develop a plan.
Devlin: “We want to make the ground and continue to make the ground somewhere that everyone can come and feel comfortable, and we know there's a particular song that we're working with the supporters trust and Her Game Too. We're looking to find positive ways we can eradicate the song, which some people don't find offensive, but it makes some people uncomfortable and people don't want to hear it in the stadium. … The plan was to meet with a group of the fans that we think are responsible for being the catalyst for the song. We were hoping to send out invitations to meet with them directly before the Huddersfield game. A couple of people are unable to attend that meeting, so we're going to see if we can reschedule that now to either the Oldham game or the Bristol Rovers game when hopefully, there will be members from LOFT as well as Her Game Too, along with myself and whoever else comes from the senior management team, to talk to the fans and to hopefully have a friendly and positive conversation about either changing the words to the song so that it's much more compatible with modern day thinking, but continuing their pride in East London, coming out with a song that doesn't make anybody feel uncomfortable when they come in the stadium -- or stop singing the song altogether.”
There was also a question posed by LOFT Chairman Doug Harper on whether the Os will schedule a friendly against Northern Ireland club Linfield, who like Orient and Hearts of Midlothian had several players enlist in the First World War, but who have a controversial association with sectarianism. Devlin said there were no plans being developed to play Linfield, and that the Hearts preseason fixture would be a biennial affair.
COMMUNICATIONS
Orient’s leadership pride themselves on transparency, but there is an argument to be made that club officials need to take more care about talking out of turn. Ruth put it to the club in the Q&A that inconsistent messaging can confuse and enrage the fanbase, and it really does a disservice to the club when misinformation or incomplete information gets spread.
Recent examples include conflicting updates on Theo Archibald’s injury and different numbers thrown out relating to the player budget.
To that end, the club said they are working to keep the various officials that speak publicly on message and interacting constructively with supporters. One place to start might be not having a board member troll fans when the O’s are 21st in the league table.
As for the O’s social media accounts, Jones said that Orient have registered a BlueSky account but have yet to use it, and have not made any decisions on whether to abandon the increasing bot-filled cesspit that is X.
Jones: “I think sometimes we're maybe a little bit of a victim of our own openness and transparency where we like to be a bit of an open house, where you guys at the Orientear, whenever you come with requests, we try and accommodate them. And yes, sometimes different things can be said in different meetings and then yes, sometimes you do get slightly different answers with stuff. But yes, we definitely do try to keep everyone aligned, but sometimes given the volume of interviews and stuff we give, messages can be slightly mixed”
Devlin: “It is something that I plan to take up with the board, not shrinking down their engagement, but how we do it to ensure that there is a consistency. But if we say we're losing X, then we're losing X. If we say the budget is X, then it's X, not X and Z and Y and then, of course, fans start thinking and people start filling gaps in the place and sometimes they start making up. If you don't fill the space, it gets filled with conspiracy theories generally. So I think your point is really well made, and it's something that George and I will probably talk to the board about.”
THE LEYTON LAUREATE (aka Herman Wang to his friends)