Well, one thing I think I can say with certainty after the completion of the Christmas/New Year holiday period is that, having gone past the traditional cut off point for relegation of 50 points, we won’t be going down this season! Also, given the gap that has grown between the top three and the rest, I think it’s okay to assume that Lincoln and Bradford are safe as well.
However, there was a time around November when the division was so tight that I thought that, say, a continuation of the run of consecutive defeats at Bolton and then Blackpool could have us thinking more of relegation than promotion within a month or so. As it is, fourth placed Huddersfield are still only twelve points above Burton occupying the last relegation place having played a game more than the Brewers.
Leyton Orient, our opponents on Saturday, are a classic case in point of how the division can have potential Play Off candidates looking anxiously over their shoulder with two or three poor results. Clearly, they’re missing the injured Aaron Connolly, who was named in half season League One select team I saw this week (as were Ronan Kpakio, Dylan Lawlor and Yousef Salech), but Orient’s position one place above the bottom four is a mystery to me having seen them play here in October – Bradford have to be the best team to have visited Cardiff City Stadium so far this season, but I’d rate Orient as the second best.
I say it’s a mystery why they’re so low in the table, but, on further reflection, the reason is pretty clear – they are equal with the other team we’ve beaten 4-3 this season, Doncaster, when it comes to the dubious honour of having the worst defensive record in League One. Although their goals have dried up to an extent in Connolly’s absence, their thirty five scored represents the fourth highest in the division, but it’s more than offset by the forty one let in at the other end of the pitch.
Orient’s last game was a poor 3-1 home loss to a Wimbledon side without a win in nine on New Years Day and this makes it one win in seven in all competitions for them now. Nevertheless, the fact that the sole win came against Bradford as they turned a 1-0 deficit into a 2-1 victory should tell City that they can take nothing for granted in two days time.
No problems getting seven questions for the quiz this time and I’ll post the answers on here on Sunday.
60s. It’s fairly well known that John Toshack made his debut in senior football when he came on as a sub in a game against Leyton Orient during this decade. In doing so, Tosh became City’s youngest ever player at the age of sixteen years and two hundred and thirty six days, but who was the seventeen year old who could well have been marking him that day?
70s. Sounds like Orient may have used the Sicilian defence when he was playing!
80’s. Chav paid by shortened editor turns out to be a loser at Ninian Park. (5,5)
90s. Ilford born defender and manager you would have thought was from NW4.
00s. Sounds like a decline of the nondescript!
10s. Leyton Orient and Cardiff are two of fifteen clubs (one being from Iceland) this player has represented. He has played most for very recent opponents of ours, then it’s his current, Championship, club, then us despite him only being a Cardiff player for one season. A rare example in recent years of a player we made a transfer market profit on, he signed for the O’s from his Icelandic club during this decade and played for us in the 2020’s. Last season he was named in a divisional team of the year, but who is he?
20.s He’s had spells with Spurs, Liverpool and Everton without playing a senior game for any of them. He’s done this while winning five international caps for a country over 7,000 miles away from south Wales. Leyton Orient are the side he’s played most for followed by Swindon and I’ve seen it said that his performance in a losing cause in Sunday’s game for his current, Championship, club was his best in his season and a half with them. He won’t remember his last visit to Cardiff City Stadium with any affection, but can you name him?
Answers.
60s. Former City player Paul Went had become Orient’s youngest ever player when he made his debut for them as a sixteen year old and he’d only turned seventeen a month earlier when John Toshack came on and scored in a game City won 3-1 at Ninian Park on 13 November 1965.
70s. Bobby Fisher played over three hundred games for Orient, mostly at right back. Bobby Fischer was a temperamental and somewhat eccentric chess Grand Master who lost a Chess World Championship with Russian Boris Spasky which I can remember being on the front pages far more than any other game of its type before or since.
80s. David Peach.
90s. Ian Hendon played more than one hundred and thirty league games for Leyton Orient and also managed the club during 15/16.
00s. Wayne Gray.
10s. Ryan Allsop played twenty times in the league for Leyton Orient after signing for them from the Icelandic side Hottur in 2012. Allsop played nearly one hundred and twenty times for Wycombe during his two spells with them and was named in the League One team of the Year last season as his Birmingham team won the league with a record number of points.
20s. Swansea goalkeeper Lawrence Vigouroux has won five caps for Chile and started his career with Spurs, he also had a spells with Liverpool and Chilean team Everton de Vina Del Mar. without playing a game for any of them. Vigouroux played over one hundred and forty games for Leyton Orient in his three seasons with them and signed for the jacks from Burnley.
