Aren’t international breaks boring? In my days of being a Premier League season ticket holder I used to find them highly annoying, but at least there was some scant consolation that you knew well in advance that they were coming. In League One it is even worse with the majority of matches being called off due to international call-ups at relatively short notice.

Last weekend there were a total of two matches in the third tier, so it would seem sensible for the EFL (sensible? EFL? yeah right!) to decide one way or the other: either our division is included in the international break, or matches go ahead regardless of the number of international call-ups. Neither is ideal but at least fans would know one way or the other.

Annoyingly we have another one to endure in November and the potential for us having to rearrange a third home game should Mansfield, ourselves, or both have enough players called up. As has been mentioned by gaffer Richie Wellens and others, the impact of moving a Saturday afternoon home game to a Tuesday evening hits the club in terms of attendance, atmosphere and revenue (what a deal!). Besides does anyone actually care about or understand the point of the Nations League anyway?

Despite the lack of a league match for a fortnight, there has been quite a bit of news coming out of the club over the past week. It started on Monday evening with the FA Cup First Round draw when we were paired with Boreham Wood away. Suffice it to say the reaction in the Supporters Club, where we watched it ahead of the “Meet the Manager Evening”, was underwhelming to say the least.

The evening itself was very interesting and well worth going to, Richie is always entertaining and handled a broad range of questions. Although sadly he did reveal that Theo Archibald had suffered a significant setback in his recovery and was potentially facing another 10 months out.

It is absolutely gutting news, as we all appreciate what Theo can contribute to the team and how much we miss not only his work rate and attitude but also his flair for the spectacular. Look after yourself Theo, get well soon, and we hope to see you back out there sooner rather than later.

The following day the club released an interview with Chairman Nigel Travis in response to reports that the board was actively seeking new investment into the club. Over the course of the interview Nigel revealed that:

• The club has taken on a third party investment company to do the “heavy lifting” in terms of finding new investors.

• The investment being sought is in two segments: i) a certain amount of money to get us through the next two or three seasons, and ii) to finance a potential new stadium and training ground.

• That Mark Devlin, based on his previous experience with Brentford, was leading the search for a site for the new stadium and was making really good progress.

Nigel also affirmed that “This is an exciting time for the club, a time to look forward and that [they] will continue to be as transparent as possible.”  Once again, it is hard to disagree with that notion. Although comparing us to the “Brentford of East London” has understandably irked a significant proportion of the fan base. While I fully understand the comparison, we are a club in our own right and having recently visited Brentford’s new stadium I would personally prefer that we continue to evolve in our own way as we have for the past seven years.  

Obviously our start to this season hasn’t been all we hoped for in pushing on from the foundations we lay last term, but it was very heartening to hear that we are continuing to actively look to grow the club and secure our future. If you think how far we have come since Nigel, Kent and co took over the club with two title-winning promotions and stabilisation in League One, then there is every reason to believe that we will end up where the board’s ambitious plans want us to be.

Equally, the news of shorter term investment to allow us to compete more effectively in an increasingly crazily financially resourced third tier is also highly encouraging. Nigel also stressed that the ideal situation was that a new investor would contribute significant funds but that he and the current board would remain very much at the helm. How realistic that is, remains to be seen.  

On Wednesday Richie Wellens was interviewed on the Orient Hour. One of the most positive answers he gave was in response to a question about whether he felt that he could achieve all his ambitions with Orient with our budget being so small? It was similar to a question that he was asked on Monday night and he reinforced the notion that he signed his new contract because he fully believes that in the next three years we can flirt with the play-offs.

While all of this aspirational and ambitious mindset throughout the club’s ownership and management is very positive, the cold hard fact is that we have underachieved in terms of results on the pitch and position in the league table so far this season. We now have a run of matches, starting at Northampton tomorrow afternoon, in which we have the opportunity to start putting some points on the board and to start climbing the table again. If we can do that then there are a number of reasons to be optimistic going forward.

 Up the O’s!