EXCELLENT O’S CAN FLY UNDER FLETCHER
ROSS EMBLETON thanked his “outstanding” Leyton Orient side after signing off from duty as interim head coach with a rout at Grimsby Town.
With new manager Carl Fletcher set to take over the reins next week, the O’s chalked up a third straight League Two victory at Blundell Park.
Goals from Daniel Happe and Josh Coulson put Orient in a commanding position, before James Alabi and Josh Wright (pen) sealed the points late on.
Embleton said: “We said three or four games ago about building and trying to get some momentum so that the new manager would be able to come into a team that is confident and is ready to move forward.
“The boys have done that. They have been outstanding in the last couple of weeks.
“We feel that this result has been coming for a little while so I’m delighted for everybody. What that does now is give the new manager real opportunity to build and look forward.
“Getting the third goal was key and that made us comfortable because we didn’t want to go and commit too many players forward.”
Orient struck first after 11 minutes when Happe fired home at the second attempt – taking advantage of the time and space that opened up in the Grimsby box.
A little more than ten minutes later, it was 2-0 as the visitors once again made their mark, uncontested, from a well-worked free-kick, when Coulson was allowed to chest down the ball and volley past James McKeown.
After the break, Grimsby piled players forward in an attempt to claw their way back into the game, but were undone on the counter-attack when Alabi intercepted possession on the half-way line and ran 40 yards, before coolly slotting the ball into the bottom corner.
There was still time for Alabi to win a penalty after beating his marker. Wright sent McKeown the wrong way from 12 yards.
Grimsby manager Michael Jolley said his side must improve their defending from set pieces.
“It was a really disappointing one for us,” he said.
“Defending set-pieces is an area that we must improve on. We have changed the set-up twice already to try and improve, but it’s clear it hasn’t worked and we must look at that again. At that stage, I don’t think there was too much in the game, but they scored two goals and worked on the counter. We can’t keep falling behind like that.”
“Today was a poor day for us and clearly the score-line is very disappointing ... but we have got another game on Tuesday and we have to go into that with a clear head.
“We need to see who is available and try and pick a team that we think can go there and get a positive result.”