Richie Wellens ‘proud of everything’ after Leyton Orient clinch League Two title

Posted Sunday, April 23, 2023 by PA

Richie Wellens was delighted after Leyton Orient secured the Sky Bet League Two title with a 2-0 home win over Crewe.

Orient cut out the early running but it was Crewe forward Chris Long who should have opened the scoring when he sprung the offside trap but then sent his shot high over the bar.

Crewe goalkeeper David Richards then denied Paul Smyth, George Moncur and Kieran Sadlier before the interval but the visitors fell behind on 51 minutes when Darren Pratley was fouled in the box and Moncur stepped forward to calmly score from the spot.

The visitors’ fate was sealed on 77 minutes when a catastrophic mix-up between Richards and Luke Offord presented substitute Charlie Kelman with the chance to score into an empty net.

And with Lawrence Vigouroux successfully denying attempts from Long again and Daniel Agyei, the Orient goalkeeper was able to claim his 24th clean sheet of the season.

Wellens said: “The relationship from the bottom to the very top, I am proud of everything.

“The spirit and attitude of the players. We are a team.

“A few teams have tried to knock us off our perch but just look at how long we’ve been at the top, and look at the gap in points. It is not often you win it with three games still to play.

“We have certain individuals who have quality, but we are a team. Our top goalscorer is on 10, we haven’t got anybody on 25 or 30 goals, we are a team.

“My mission from day one was to stay up last year, so the turnaround in the last 12 months has been remarkable, and everyone at this club deserves it.

“This is a massive achievement for any team, but even more so when you consider what has happened to this club in the past six years.

“Going from the National League to League One in such a short space of time is extremely difficult. Thankfully this club has achieved it.”

Orient will play in League One next season after an eight-year absence which included two years in non-league football during a disastrous three-year period of ownership under Italian Francesco Becchetti.

He took the club to virtual oblivion before new owners Nigel Travis and Kent Teague stepped in to save the club in 2017 and since then, it has been onwards and upwards.

It is only the second time in their history that the club, who joined the Football League in 1905, have won a Football League title, the other occasion was back in 1969-70 when they carried off the Third Division title under manager Jimmy Bloomfield.

Vice-chairman Teague admitted that the promotion was very emotional, saying: “It is just unbelievable.

“Even though you dream about it and think about it and want it and work for it, when it actually happens, it is absolutely incredible.

“Mainly this has been just about delivering the club back to the fans where it belongs.

“Now we have to prepare to become a League One club and once we’ve done that, we’ll see where we go from there.”

Crewe boss Lee Bell lamented a couple of defensive errors.

“Yes, it’s the story of our season,” he said. “Costly errors and they are the types of goals we’ve been conceding.

“I thought the players stuck to their task, they played to the shape we wanted them to, we weren’t going to come here and try and be expansive and press them.

“We didn’t want to be part of their party, we wanted to try and kill the atmosphere a little bit which I thought we did. They didn’t really create anything in the first half and we got into some good situations on the counter-attack which we worked on and produced some good play.

“I thought that for an away performance against the champions who are by far the best team in the league it was excellent.

“It’s a hard result to take and I am going to have to digest it. I just thought that overall, it was a really good performance.”