http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q173/Nordskov_dk/Leyton%20O/TYA_zpsd9c34ca5.jpg
New owner
I guess I should have seen it come from a mile away. My only excuse is that it’s hard to see when you are standing in the middle of the hurricane's eye.
It’s why we love sport and why people are so passionate about football.
Jenn Suhr said it the best “Pole vaulting is an event of high and lows” and that’s also the case for football (just without the stick). No other place are you taken from the highest of the high to the lowest of the low and back again on a weekly basis. Some days it even happens several times within the span of the 90 minutes the two teams battle it out of the field.
I had just lived the highest of the high. Winning the league with a record 102 points in my first year as the
Leyton Orient manager was a high. Getting the Head Coach of the year award and seeing my players take home awards left and right was just the icing on the cake.
http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q173/Nordskov_dk/Leyton%20O/SeasonAward_zps942703ed.jpg
http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q173/Nordskov_dk/Leyton%20O/SeasonAward2_zps3ea7444f.jpg
I was excited about the prospect of playing in the
Sky Bet Championship and even told the team that we should be aiming for a mid table finish next season, before they left the training facility to go on a well deserved holiday.
I should have seen it come from a mile away but I didn't and it hit me like a runaway train.
There had been hints and tips about it in the local press for weeks. During the season I had ignored it and concentrated about doing my job of winning football games. But now there we no hiding from the facts. The teams beloved Chairman
Barry Hearn had decided to leave the beautiful game of football and the rumors about who would take over the team was many.
During the season plenty of journalists had tried to bait me into taking a stab at
Barry Hearn and his lack of willingness to invest serious money into the team. It was noble that he had build his team without spending a single £ on transfer fees but the press had seen it as an unwillingness to take chances.
I had refused to take the bait and played the "no comment" game.
----------------------------------------------------------------
The Guardian
The latest news in the takeover talk of Leyton Orient comes out of America. The ownership group behind the Dodgers baseball team is in talk with Barry Hearn about buying the team.
With the Yankees joining up with Manchester City and the Red Sox owner being heavily involved with Liverpool FC, Magic Johnson and his group sees newly promoted Leyton Orient as a perfect opportunity to get a foothold in London.
The plan is to invest heavily in the team to get them ready for the EPL already next season.
----------------------------------------------------------------
BBC
Qatar Investment Authority might be at it again. The group that already has a huge investment in PSG might now have switched their focus from Paris to London. The promotion of London based team Leyton Orient was just the stepping stone they needed.
It speculated that they will buy the team and move it into the Olympic stadium just 750 yards away from the O´s current home field.
----------------------------------------------------------------
The Sun
It might be time for India to make the move in to the world of top-flight football. The way to do it might be thru newly promoted Leyton Orient that has been set up for sale by Chairman Barry Hearn.
The man behind the move is rumored to be Indian media mogul Kalanithi Maran who has an estimated net worth of more than $3.3 billion.
It's widely speculated that if he succeeds in buying the team that he will change to teams color to green and the logo to a goldfish jumping thru two flaming rings.
Even with the wild guessing by the press , when the announcement finally came it still shocked me. Instead of a huge press conference introducing a new owner, it was all revealed in a short press release leaked to the press on a Friday afternoon.
Leyton Orient Press Release:
“Mr. Barry Hearn, Chairman and President of Leyton Orient FC has today resigned from all positions held with the club.
The new President of Leyton Orient is 34 year old Matthew Porter, the team’s former managing director.
There are no plans to provide the club with any investment at this stage”
I was devastated. Not only were my new boss 10 years younger than me but all my dreams and plans for the upcoming season were going down the drain. This meant no US scouting. No extravagant transfer budget to add new players and no big salary budget to work with.
That meant that I was left with a payroll budget of £22,69K pr week and a transfer budget of just £625K. In comparison the team with the lowest payroll last season in the championship had a payroll close to 50K while the top spender QPR used close to 1M per week in salaries.
I had two options. I could either whine and complain about the new owners until they got so tired of me that they kicked me out or I became so sick of it that I decided to quit myself.
Or
I could try to spin it into something positive. It was us against the world. Nobody believes in us. This was the perfect “Chip on the shoulder” card for me to play if I could only get the team to believe in it.
I came in to the 12th best league in the world with a decent group of players. Could I find a few more castoffs and get them all to buy into the us against the world mentality it just might work.
I had to give it a try. There were no way I was giving the new babyface Chairman the satisfaction of have me quitting.
All plans of a top half finish next season was out the window. Now it was only a case of survival.
