Brisbane Road boss looks back on work he has done so far and discusses tactical changes he made at Newport

Ian Hendon has admitted Leyton Orient is a good place to be right now, but insists he is not getting carried away with their start despite it taking them to the top of League Two.

The O’s have won four from four in the division and conceded just three goals, they also went close to knocking Championship outfit MK Dons out of the Capital One Cup.

Rewind back to April, when Orient were defeated 6-1 by the Dons in League One, and Brisbane Road seemed a completely different place.

But optimism appears to be coming back and Hendon is happy with how things have gone after admitting he did need to lift things after the club suffered relegation.

“Myself and my staff have come in this summer and just started afresh. I do my job how I think I should do it and at the moment it is going well,” said the Orient boss.

“We are not getting carried away with our start. We try and win every game we play. There is no magical formula. You set your players up to play, you put your trust in them and they go and perform and do the things that we ask them. We are getting the results at the moment.

“I think I did need to lift things because the club were coming off the back of a relegation. The key thing was to speak to the players first and foremost because there was a few that didn’t want to be here.

“If the players don’t want to be at the football club then they go – it is as simple as that. That is that we done. We cleared out players that didn’t want to be here and brought in players that do.

“They all want to play for this football club, they all want to play for me and they all want to play for each other so it is a good place to be at the moment.”

Hendon may be only five games into his managerial reign at Brisbane Road, but he has showed already that he isn’t afraid to change things early.

In Orient’s opening three matches of the season they didn’t need to make tactical alterations in matches because they were in control.

But against Stevenage and Newport County recently they have and Hendon has made early substitutions in both fixtures.

His changes have been the catalyst to earning two victories and the O’s boss explained why he took Lloyd James off on Saturday at Rodney Parade and why Dean Cox was withdrawn too.

“Dean has a bit of a tight hamstring; he got that during the game. I am not sure if it was when the boys were diving on him to celebrate or when he got the goal. He has a tight ‘hammy’ and we took him off as a precaution,” added Hendon.

“We took Lloyd off because we were concerned with Newport’s three at the back and the wing-backs were getting out too easily. We tried to stick someone in front of them.

“I put ‘Coxy’ out on the left and Blair Turgott out on the right and went with two in the middle. We felt Newport’s supply was coming from the wide areas rather than down the middle so we tried to block them up a bit.”

It worked perfectly because it halted some of the hosts momentum and Turgott assisted Cox for the vital third goal. Hendon is already showing his tactical nous so early on in the campaign and long may that continue at Brisbane Road.