Orient’s McAnuff makes his mark

Jobi McAnuff was delighted to get back on the scoresheet for Leyton Orient in their 3-0 win over League One basement boys Yeovil.

McAnuff, 33, netted his third goal for the club on the hour to seal the points and end a 16-game drought dating back to the home loss to Rochdale in late September.

And he paid tribute to striker Darius Henderson, who picked up the assist on his goal, saying: “I had a couple in the first half where the keeper made some decent saves, but once again it’s just about trying to get in those areas.

“Luckily Hendo has put it on a plate for me. It did come bobbling over so I had to control it but it was a nice little tap-in!”

Henderson was brought into the starting line-up by boss Fabio Liverani as one of four changes from the 1-0 loss at Peterborough.

And McAnuff felt the move worked well, with the former Millwall man keeping the Yeovil defenders on their toes throughout before making way for David Mooney.

He added: “It gives us a different option. He does a lot of work that goes unnoticed some times.

“He drags two, three people around that creates space for other players. I thought he was a real handful with Dags as usual.

“Hendo was unlucky not to get a goal, but he had a big hand in the performance.”

Orient flew out of the blocks, with Chris Dagnall netting the opener inside two minutes after McAnuff’s persistence on the edge of the box.

And Ryan Hedges added a second on eight minutes, after Marvin Bartley and Andrea Dossena combined on the left.

It could have been much more as Dagnall and Henderson both hit the post and McAnuff added: “It was a great start. We wanted to start well and obviously we managed to do that and blew them away really.

“We had some good chances, their keeper pulled off some good saves. The first half in particular we looked a real threat every time we went forward and had numerous chances.

“But 2-0 at half time we just said make sure we get the next goal or worst case don’t concede and obviously managed to play it that way.”

Although boosted by a fourth win in seven, O’s remain two points adrift of safety following Coventry’s victory at Chesterfield.

But McAnuff says the squad were determined to get the result against the Glovers and will be looking for a repeat performance when in-form Barnsley come to Brisbane Road on Tuesday searching for a seventh successive win.

He said: “The boys were really focused. We’d had a good week’s training and said to ourselves we want to start games well, which we have done at home lately, to be fair.

“From our point of view if we could get that first goal it just opens the game up a little bit and makes things that little bit easier in terms of what we want to do.

“When you perform like that and play well you want the games to come thick and fast and obviously another home game so we just need to make sure we go and repeat the performance and if we do that the result will come.”