Orient evisceration only the start as managers fight back against entitled players

If you missed Leyton Orient boss Richie Wellens’ post-match interview from last weekend, then don’t fret. His brutal honesty – cynics have called it arse-covering – could become the norm for exasperated managers.

You can check out Wellens’ seven-minute evisceration of his Orient below. TL;DR: he labelled his squad “really, really weak”; criticised them for “serving up rubbish”; and apologised to fans for risking his relationship with them to protect players who ‘wasted a year’ of his managerial career. Wellens said his ‘dilly-dalliers’ had “relegation written all over us”.

The context: Orient had just secured survival in League One, thanks in part to results elsewhere, making a 2-2 home draw with Burton enough to preserve their safety. Their 20th-place finish came a season after Orient had got within a game of the Championship, losing the play-off final to Charlton.

Wellens seethed at what many of his players deemed worthy of celebration and the meek manner they achieved it. Many managers, all too familiar with Wellens’ woes, will have sympathised and cheered him on.

Wellens, though, isn’t the first League One manager to speak frankly about his squad’s character deficit.

Michael Duff said last month that his Wycombe players had wasted their time this season: “I know what a dressing room should smell like and feel like and we don’t have that.”

Interviews like Wellens’ and Duff’s are popular popcorn-grabbers because they are rarity. Traditionally, criticism is kept in-house; managers are expected to protect their players, to deflect or absorb whatever flak is flying.

It cannot be a surprise, though, that many managers have reached the end of their tether, their patience exhausted by players who are unable or unwilling – often both – to hold up their end of the deal.

Frankly, managers ought to have felt empowered to say what they really think long before now. Because so often when they go before the media, many are spinning us a yarn for the benefit of the barely-arsed players under them and faceless officials above. But too few managers ever see the favour repaid.

It was different when managers controlled clubs from bottom to somewhere close to the top. They oversaw almost everything – they were responsible.

That is now true to a far lesser extent since the power of most managers – head coaches in many cases – has been diluted or delegated elsewhere. Yet they are held more accountable than ever.

In Wellens’ case, as it is with many of his contemporaries in the 92, he can only work with what he’s given.

Even more so than the Premier League, clubs in League One and Two live and die by their recruitment, especially their loans. There are no eight, nine-year contracts in the second, third, fourth tiers. Generally, players and clubs are living season to season. Perhaps even month to month.

But with recruitment chiefs and directors of football often in greater control of a club’s destiny – usually with barely a fraction of the accountability; these really are the cushiest gigs – why should managers and head coaches be subservient human shields?

When it comes to players, it used to be a reciprocal arrangement. A manager protected their players for as long as they were perceived to be doing their best for the boss. But self-serving players too often now aren’t motivated to keep their end of that deal yet still expect the same privileges. More, even.

Wellens, in charge at Orient since March 2022, was speaking from a position of rare authority, with only four managers in the 92 having more years service to their current club. The average managerial reign in the top four divisions is considerably less than half Wellens’ time served.

Which proves to players, even those on season-long deals, that managers are almost always more dispensable than them. And loanees may be even less invested in the manager, safe in the certain knowledge there’s an expiry date on the relationship.

A reliance on loan players makes sense for League One and Two clubs precariously balancing their budgets – but only if those being borrowed are ready and motivated to muck in.

For some time now there has been among managers a growing concern about the lack of players with the necessary traits – mental and physical ‘robustness’; the will to run, fight, scrap, as Wellens described it – to thrive in the muck and bullets of the Football League.

There are reasons for that. It has long been thought that academies and Under-21s football do not adequately prepare young players to make the jump to senior dressing rooms. Especially now more and more teams are embracing the return to a more direct and physical, less intricate style of play.

When players fall short, managers too often provide easy cover, whether they are willing or not.

For managers at an elite level, their problems are exacerbated by players enjoying the luxury of longer contracts that set them up for life often before they leave their teens.

That, and having every conceivable whim and need catered for does not breed the character and mentality that managers need and trust. Certainly not in the volume required.

So why should managers put their credibility on the line by maintaining an obligation to protect self-serving players who aren’t invested in them?

Some of the reaction to Wellens’ words has questioned his responsibility to motivate his squad to do all the things he described as the bare minimum for a professional. Which again absolves the players of their most basic of duties.

Players have never had more power, yet too few want the responsibility. They want to know what a manager – or a club – can do for them without recognising their obligation. And should the answer threaten to take them out of their comfort zone, managers need to watch their backs.

Until that imbalance is addressed, and more players adopt a more introspective, less egocentric outlook, don’t be surprised when managers refuse to pull the wool over fans’ eyes.