I’ve not done enough says Leyton Orient midfielder
Leyton Orient midfielder Jobi McAnuff admits he hasn’t performed to his full potential this season.
But the 33-year-old Jamaican international is determined to end the season on a high, after netting his third goal for the club in Saturday’s 3-0 win over Yeovil.
McAnuff joined on a free transfer last summer, but has struggled to make a full impact until recently and said: “I backed myself to perform at this level and I haven’t done as well as I should have done this year.
“I’ll be the first to admit that, so from my point of view hopefully I can give the fans something to look forward to for the end of the season.
“I’m a professional player and I’ve got to go and do my best whatever the circumstances and obviously it’s nice that the fans are starting to see a bit more from me because that expectation when I came to the club was a fair one.”
Managerial changes and the team’s inconsistent form have certainly not helped McAnuff settle in east London, but he wants to put the winter’s problems firmly behind him as O’s fight for survival.
He added: “From a football point of view, because results haven’t gone the way we wanted, from my perspective it’s probably affected my game a little bit and I haven’t produced anywhere near what I feel I’m capable of.
“It’s always frustrating going home on a Saturday night when you haven’t played anywhere near what you’re capable of.
“But I think it’s been the same for pretty much everybody. I don’t think there’s many people that can say they’ve had a great season personally and I think now it’s just about digging through it.
“We’ve got a chance with the games we’ve got coming up to just get something out of the season and make sure we stay up and then we can probably have a look back and see why things didn’t quite go so well.
“From my point of view it’s about the positives now and we’ve just got to go on and play as well as we can between now and the end of the season.”
McAnuff has started to forge a good relationship on the left with Italian Andrea Dossena, but admitted there could be a few problems if is forced to fill in at the back on a regular basis.
“I like playing with Andrea, he’s quite an adventurous full-back and from my point of view that helps me create a bit of space some times. I’ve got a good relationship with him on the ball and enjoy playing with him, he’s a good player,” he said.
“I know he’s going to try and make things happen and there’s going to be two or three times in a game where he’s overlapped me and got out of the game and obviously I’ve got to recognise that and drop in.
“As long as he doesn’t end up doing it too much and I end up playing left-back and he plays left wing, then there could be a problem!”
O’s visit relegation rivals Crawley for another crunch clash on Saturday and they also have to travel to fellow strugglers Coventry on April 1, but McAnuff believes O’s can stay in League One.
“We’ve got a lot in and around us to come and I think if we take care of business in those games we’ll be okay, obviously with getting a few points from other games along the way.
“Every time we win it seems a few of the others do, but I think we’re kind of getting to that next little level above us now where a few teams are getting sucked in.
“We’ve just got to take care of our business and if we do that we’ll be fine.
“We’ve got 11 games left so we want to win as many as we can out of that and the teams we’ve got coming up, we’ll back ourselves to do it.”
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