Leyton Orient head coach Richie Wellens hopes their end-of-season lap of appreciation means more next year.

O's ended the League Two campaign with a 1-0 home loss to Tranmere Rovers at the weekend, finishing in 13th place.

A crowd of 6,623 turned up at the Breyer Group Stadium on the last day of the season and saw Kane Hemmings secure all three points for the visitors.

But the hosts received a warm reception thanks to their recovery under Wellens over the past two months.

"It's still bittersweet, I want to do this in front of a full house," Wellens told the club website.

"I like these laps of appreciation, I think the supporters deserve from the players and staff the recognition for coming every week and travelling up and down the country watching us.

"But lets forward 12 months. I hope our lap of appreciation is more meaning and a bigger and better atmosphere."

Tom James returned to the starting line-up after a long injury lay-off and Wellens is hoping to settle various issues as quickly as possible in the off-season.

He added: "He's a player of quality, everyone at the club knows. We have to wait and see Tom's decision, see what it is and move forward.

"It's Martin's [Ling] job to get these deals over the line, I won't interfere. He has done it for long enough, I will leave it to Martin.

"It's important, in terms of pre-season, when we go away on the second of July I would like to have as much of the squad as possible as that's where we get our social aspect of the group together, it builds our bond. That would be ideal.

"It's quite strange, you get to the end of a season and 10 players might be disappearing, we've not got that we've got a large percentage of the players will be here next year.

"We just need little moments of quality, you see it there in little patches. We should be scoring goals today but we haven't. That's just improving, the team and getting a couple, the icing on the cake, because we have good foundations."

Wellens also hopes to have Dan Happe and Craig Clay back for the start of the 2022-23 campaign and wants the team to get off to a fast start.

He said: "Dan Happe will be fit for first day of pre-season which is fantastic for him, it's been a tough injury. Craig will probably miss a couple of weeks of pre-season. As long as they're fit to go to Portugal, I will be happy with that.

"We've got a full rota of friendlies, two in Portugal, I think it's important you get as many games as possible to balance it up, 45 minutes building up to 60, then 10 days/two weeks before the start of the season you want to build up to 90.

"We want to start fast next year, we don't want to be chasing. When you chase, it's really difficult. I say that but Bristol Rovers have scored seven and chased down something that was difficult to chase!

"Congratulations to Joey Barton and Andy Mangan, who is a good mate of mine. But we want to come and do that the same time next year."