Premier League

the sun rises again in the east after years of darkness and tragedy

Paul Smyth of Leyton Orient celebrates promotion to League One

Leyton Orient have been promoted back to League Two after almost a decade away, and it’s reasonable to say that those eight years have been… eventful.

 

After it was all over and done with, some fans might have recognised that Leyton Orient got promoted in the most Leyton Orient way possible. With 12 minutes of their game at Gillingham on Tuesday night left to play, the lights went out over Priestfield. A fault in an underground electricity cable had caused a power cut. The result was by this time more or less an irrelevance. Good job too, since Orient were losing 2-0.

But with power restored the last few minutes of the game were played without major incident and at the full-time whistle, with fourth-placed Stockport County and fifth-placed Carlisle United having cancelled each other out and Swindon Town having beaten sixth-placed Bradford City, Leyton Orient were able to celebrate promotion to League One.

Ironically, the last time they were relegated from this division in 2015, it was Swindon who snuffed out any chance of them staying up by coming from two down to salvage a 2-2 draw on the last day of the season.

There is, really, no simpler way to put it. From the beginning of the season, Leyton Orient have been the best team in League Two. They’ve been out of the automatic promotion places for just one week, and that was because they ‘only’ beat Grimsby Town 2-0. They took 28 points from their first 10 games and have been top of the table for the whole of the season, bar a couple of weeks in October when a mini-slump of a defeat and two draws knocked them down to second place for an entire fortnight.

This has been no less than a sensational achievement from manager Richie Wellens. At the time of his appointment in March 2022, Orient were 20th in League Two, just four points clear of safety with 13 games of the season left and just league wins to that point. Under Wellens, they ended that campaign with seven wins, two draws and just four defeats. And sometimes, a new manager bounce turns into a springboard, and that recovery has breathed new life into a team that had been severely labouring under his predecessor Kenny…

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