Leyton Orient v Arsenal: Russell Slade disappointed by 'lack of respect' shown in Olympic Stadium plans
Alone on bleak winter days in his apartment at the Matchroom Stadium, Russell Slade could be forgiven a feeling of isolation.
Uncertainty: Leyton Orient manager Russell Slade should be enjoying his side's FA Cup clash with Arsenal but there is an air of concern caused by West Ham's Olympic Stadium move Photo: GETTY IMAGES
By Oliver Brown 11:00PM GMT 19 Feb 2011
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This is not simply because the Leyton Orient manager’s wife, Lisa, and his four children are living more than 200 miles away in Scarborough.
It arises from the view that his little pied-à-terre affords of the hulking Olympic Stadium, whose future housing of East End rivals West Ham could threaten the very future of the club he has helped galvanise.
“Orient is a 130-year-old ‘family’ club — it needs to be considered in anything that happens,” Slade says, with a note of ruefulness.
“I don’t think one of the big boys, like West Ham, should come and bulldoze over us like we’re a League One club and we don’t matter. We do matter, to a lot of people.”
That connection with the community will be vividly illustrated this on Sunday, when 6,000 fans gather on Brisbane Road to host North London nobility, in the form of Barcelona-beating Arsenal.
But what should be a cause for untrammelled celebration is haunted by uncertainty, as Orient’s disciples contemplate the West Ham move and the encroachment it would herald upon their natural heartlands of Leyton and Stratford.
Barry Hearn, the Orient chairman and a man of sunny predisposition, is in no doubt. The relocation of West Ham, a relative giant, to a site within a mile of a far smaller ground could put his cherished club out of business.
The offer by Karren Brady, the West Ham vice-chairman, of free or discounted admission for families — all for the price of a season ticket — scarcely aids his cause. Children, he knows, are far more likely to be enticed by the promise of Premier League football that the neighbours can provide.
“I am staggered by the lack of respect shown to Leyton Orient,” Hearn says.
“It seems to me that we have been completely ignored.” Such status anxiety is sharpened by an ironic juxtaposition in the fixture list, where the Arsenal showpiece is followed barely 24 hours later by West Ham’s fifth-round match at home to Burnley on Monday night.
It is a reflection of Hearn’s ingrained optimism that, in these straitened times, he can look with bullishness towards the Arsenal game and describe Slade as “the best manager in the world”.
Slade himself acknowledges that in a career spanning over 400 games, he has never experienced a dynamic quite like the one he enjoys with Orient’s frank, fast-talking chairman.
“It’s a lonely place, sometimes, for the manager to be the motivator,” the 50 year-old says. “Who’s going to pick the manager up on a Sunday morning, after we’ve been beaten 5-0 at Brighton? To be fair to Barry, we were second from bottom at the start of the season and he was still my No 1 fan. As long as we’re not in a relegation scrap, he’ll be more than happy.
“He’s a very positive person, and that helps me. When somebody has that belief in you, and knows that the team has potential, it makes you roll your sleeves up.”
Fittingly for the chaos he may yet confront at Orient, the avuncular Slade is a self-confessed “firefighter”. He forged this reputation at Scarborough, whom he saved from relegation in his first season in 2001, before reaching the League Two and League One play-off finals with Grimsby, then Yeovil.
When his intervention last year ensured Orient’s survival in the third tier, Hearn had little hesitation in placing him on a two-year contract.
A perpetual enthusiast for the game, Slade never progressed further as a player than Notts County’s reserves. He could have entered football earlier, aged 18, but chose instead to invest his energies in a four-year sport science degree.
On Sunday he meets the trailblazer of the cerebral route into management — namely, that famed alumnus of Strasbourg University’s economics course, Arsène Wenger.
“There are two sides, aren’t there? There’s the coaching, and then there’s the management of people. Wenger does that exceptionally well, and that’s something I try to pride myself on.”
Slade, having earned his first coaching badge at 19, is still fascinated by his art. “Characters in the changing room come from different backgrounds now. It’s not like how it used to be in the North-East, where a miner would pop out and you would have yourself a player. These are not the sort of players you can give a global ---------- to, and expect them to take it.
Sometimes you have to drag a player to one side, rather than talk to him in front of the group, for fear of embarrassing him. If you give players one negative you have to give them three positives as well.”
Asked if he believes players have become soft in their attitude, Slade replies: “I do, yeah.”
He had better disabuse his charges of any flakiness to face Arsenal, and quickly. At Orient, whether in the centre circle or the boardroom, this is a time for toughness.
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