Clohessy: It was hard to see Nolan step down
Leyton Orient player-manager Kevin Nolan shows his frustrating from the touchline (pic: Simon O'Connor). - Credit: Archant
Experienced player talks about events at Brisbane Road over past week and how players need to take share of blame
Sean Clohessy admitted it was difficult for everyone to see Kevin Nolan have his managerial duties at Leyton Orient taken off him last week.
The former West Ham United captain was asked to focus entirely on playing on April 12 and hasn’t appeared for the east Londoners in League Two since with the club releasing a statement insisting he has an ankle injury.
Although O’s beat Dagenham & Redbridge 3-2 on Saturday, they lost 3-1 at home to Plymouth Argyle last night and are five points off the top seven.
It appears the change in management by president Francesco Becchetti hasn’t worked and the ex-Southend United defender agreed it has left uncertainty at the club.
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Clohessy said: “The chairman makes the decisions and at the end of the day he does what he thinks is right. It is hard to see a manager go or in this case with the gaffer stepping down, but you have to deal with it.
“That is football nowadays. There are not many managers that stay in a job for three or four seasons. I think during the last two or three years, I’ve had so many managers come and go at the different clubs I’ve been at.
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“You just have to roll with it and obviously it is a different situation now because there is a lot of uncertainty, but the boys have just got on with it and Andy Hessenthaler has been brilliant, he has tried to give us a lease of life.
“The chairman has said his words, he is very passionate and we haven’t got an actual manager in charge at the moment, but the boys are playing and you can’t complain when you’re playing. We have to take the blame, not the manager.”
Orient’s decision to ask Nolan to concentrate entirely on playing appears to have backfired for the Brisbane Road club. What made the move so strange was that the 33-year-old had actually enjoyed a decent start to life as a manager.
Although the O’s struggled for results over Easter and into the start of April, they had registered good victories before that. Even though everybody wanted to achieve promotion, another year in League Two wouldn’t have been a disaster.
“We got good results and had a lot of clean sheets at the start, we had a bad defeat against Northampton Town, but they’ve won and cruised the league so that’s a bit difference,” added Clohessy.
“I think the last two or three weeks we’ve had bad results against teams we felt, not just the fans, but we felt we needed to go to York and win. At Barnet we had to get a victory and we haven’t got the results we should have.
“But that is not just down to Kevin or the chairman or the players, it is a collective thing and we didn’t do it. The chairman has chosen to do what he has chosen to do and that’s his belief, but we have to take the blame and do it for ourselves as well now.”
