Orient Express Leaves City Stranded: Leyton Orient 1-0 Imps

October 26, 2025 Gary Leyton Orient, Lincoln City, Matches, Reports 2

Credit Graham Burrell

On every occasion bar one this season, the Imps have either been good or we’ve got a good result.

Wimbledon away was a bit different, going a man down early, but at 11v11, City have always been a decent prospect. Over the last few games, we’ve started well and missed chances, and once again, as it did against Exeter, that came back to haunt us.

That wasn’t the story of the game, though. For the first time this season, I thought we looked disjointed and jaded. It felt like that early onslaught was all we had, and once we stepped off, we never got back into the game. Respect to Orient, they did the one thing we couldn’t, and that was score, but overall they’re nothing like the best team we’ve seen this season.

Sadly, to take three points, they didn’t need to be, and I don’t really know why it happened.

For the second game in a row, James Collins started on the bench, with Rob Street playing down the middle. That left House on the left, Hackett on the right, and Draper pushed a little further forward alongside Street. It felt like a traditional 4-4-2 rather than the usual 4-2-3-1 we prefer, but it also lacked Adam Reach. He pulled up in training on Friday and, while Ryley Towler didn’t do anything fundamentally wrong, Reach was a big miss.

In the two games we’ve lost recently, we’ve had an injury: McGrandles against Exeter City and Reach yesterday. It’s easy to say “we missed such and such,” but actually, in both games, had we taken gilt-edged chances early doors, the game would have been different.

The first came after two minutes, and I think this is a good save by Carson, the Orient keeper, but stats people say it was a shot off target. It’s fallen to House, who had two great chances early doors in the last game as well, but this is a top chance. Our xG was 0.9 throughout the game, and in two minutes, we got one at 0.30. The ball drops over the top, he’s onside with time to watch it drop, and he smashes it towards the top corner. There’s a slight touch from the keeper to turn it onto the bar.

Does James Collins score it? Probably, but you do have to remember the other tasks these players have. Ben House, again, contested the most defensive duels of any Imp, 10, winning 70%. The next highest in that forward line was five for Reeco Hackett. I’m not making excuses here. I included Collins in my starting XI for the game, but I also included House, as he has quickly gone from fringe to first team once again.

He wasn’t the only one to miss early. McGrandles smashed over awkwardly from ten yards out after Reeco’s corner, and again, you’d have liked someone like Bayliss behind it. That said, Bayliss did the same in the second half, so maybe it’s just the way things are running at the moment. I’ve got to use stats to beat us a little here: when you’re having so few shots, as we are, but your accuracy is high, eventually you’re going to see a drop-off. We beat Peterborough and Northampton with lower xG than yesterday.

We still kept pouring forward, and another chance fell (almost) to Freddie, but he saw it late and Reeco arrived offside. Here’s an issue with xG as a stat: that chance doesn’t rank. Because it was a ball into the box nobody got on the end of, it’s not ratable as xG, but maybe one in ten of those goes in as well. We’d laid siege to the Orient goal in the first ten minutes and not got our reward.

I kinda wish I’d switched off after that, because quite a few of our players did.

We just looked really disjointed after that. Orient didn’t threaten much, a couple of half-chances, but nothing serious. Obviously, Aaron Connolly looked to be a danger, but Orient didn’t, not as a whole. I saw nothing to make me think we were going to lose the game, but nothing to suggest we would win it either. It just became a bit stodgy.

We lacked the intensity we’ve shown in recent weeks. We lacked quality on the ball, with some phases of play looking broken and messy for both sides. I didn’t think we competed well for the seconds, and it all just went a bit flat, like a failed Yorkshire pudding on your Sunday dinner. Many went into the game expecting a goal fest, and while we’d hinted at it early on, it just felt like we dropped off.

Did we? Not intentionally, obviously, but some things did seem to be lacking. I think we missed Reach’s penetration on the left, certainly more so than we missed Conor against Exeter (no disrespect, but I think we have better cover in midfield). I’m not sure Street or Draper had their best games, and Reeco turned in one of his lesser performances. Even our delivery from set pieces was average at times, from throws and corners. The more the game went on, the less it felt like us.

I also didn’t rate the referee. Here’s the kicker: I can’t remember why! He didn’t do anything wrong as such, but he just felt uncertain a lot of the time. He gave a couple of soft free kicks, shied away from yellows (certainly should have given House one for a challenge, I recall), and then there were the bizarre 25 seconds of added time. Who adds 25 seconds? There had been a stoppage; surely you just add a minute on. Unless he’s on new technology that (incorrectly) records the exact amount of time you need adding on, he just felt weak.

Generally, and again this is not attached to the result one bit, I think the standard of refereeing this season has been poor. I’m not one normally to drop on officials unless it’s obvious, but there have been so few that seem to get how to officiate a game. These officials doing Wealdstone and Aldershot as well as Wigan and Lincoln in a single season just don’t cut it for me. The two divisions (three, including League Two) are completely different in terms of pace and game structure, and we need to see consistency, which just isn’t happening.

In my opinion, outside of the first ten minutes, it was just a poor game. Orient look like a side ready to catch fire, but they’re just smouldering at the minute. Score early, we win the game. Miss those chances, and it’s over to them, and while they dominated possession, only once did I feel like they might use it.


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