Richie Wellens slams Leyton Orient’s defence and naivety after his side’s 3-2 defeat to Stevenage on Saturday afternoon.
Aaron Connolly put Orient ahead in the 24th minute, followed by Harvey White’s equaliser for Stevenage. Lewis Freestone’s header in the 54th minute then gave Stevenage the lead, with Carl Piergianni’s goal from a corner in the 61st minute making it 3-1.
Despite a late goal from Dom Ballard in the 68th minute and a missed chance by Connolly in stoppage time, Stevenage held on for the win.
Orient head coach Richie Wellens felt his team showed ‘real signs of naivety’ as he slammed the way the team defended.
The result means that Stevenage are 2nd in League One with 22 points from 9 games played, while Leyton Orient are in 17th with 11 points from 10 games played.
Wellens said, per Guardian Series: “We are conceding far too many goals. I think they all their shots on target and more or less form set plays. We don’t track runs, and we don’t defend set plays. So real signs of naivety but we need to get better.”
On Josh Koroma: “I don’t think Josh performed anywhere near his level today. That’s why he came off. I want people to be enthusiastic. Body language. Positive, reactions. And we never got that. Josh is a massive player for us, but I think Josh look himself in the mirror, we need form him.”
On Tommy Simkin: “Thomas needs confidence. Again, he is a young goalkeeper, and we have in this position before with young goalkeepers. Again, look yourself in the mirror, train properly all week, have accountability for what you do, and we will see if he is picked for Cardiff City next week.”
He added: “We are trying to be different. We’re not just trying to win football matches; we are trying to develop players who we can sell for millions of pounds.”.
“In the 10-minute spell where we let two goals in, we were naive. We’re a naive team at the moment.
“I thought we had some really good spells in the game but we conceded as soon as we scored – again, the signs of a naive team.
“But I also see some good signs as well. It’s frustrating because we can’t seem to piece together the same 90 minutes.
“For me the biggest disappointment is the first 15 minutes of the second half. Because we had a bit of confidence we started passing it about in front of people, when all we needed to do was get down the sides.
“We spoke about set-plays and that’s what they do. They’ve done that for three to four years, (former Boro manager) Steve Evans was very good for it.”
To the club’s media: “It’s a big week coming up and a very difficult game now with Cardiff City away. Cardiff are a proper football team.
“Today, I don’t know why they put us on Sky because every game is like that. You should play football with a helmet on. But like I said, they’ve been doing that for three years. So you look at their back four, they’ve been a long time, same full backs, same centre backs, same style of play.
“And when you’re us and you’re in transition, and if we played like that, it’s a lot easier to adapt to because it’s very basic.
“We’re trying to be different. We’re not just trying to win football much, we’re trying to develop players that we can sell for millions of pounds and develop them to go on and play in a Championship.
“So it’s a lot tougher and it takes a lot longer than what other teams’ style of play does.”
He’s fuming 🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/qJDCBH8bH7
— Boro Spud (@boro_spud) September 27, 2025
Stevenage manager Alex Revell said: “That’s all you can ask for. When you make an error like that, you get punished but there’s no better way of bouncing back from that than doing what he did.
“That shows his character and how much he’s grown as a person – he can move on and forget about things like that.
“Both goals have come from our mistakes but we’ve gone a goal down away from home and we’ve won the game.
“Being hard to beat comes from real hard work. When players see rewards for that, it’s a lot easier to deliver information during a session.”
Here’s how fans reacted as Richie Wellens slams Leyton Orient’s defence and naivety after the 3-2 defeat to Stevenage…
@DanAuton2590: You’d think having come up against this ‘Very basic’ style of play twice a season ever since his appointment that he’d come up with a way to combat it by now, clearly not 🤷♀️ #lofc
@DirkTurk: Pretty poor comments about Stevenage really. He just got schooled by Revell whose side are top of the league. Very spikey. Still too much chopping and changing for my liking. Bag of shite, right team won, we’ll be lucky not to be in a relegation battle, the vast majority of this squad has got nothing about it, that last 10-15 mins just topped it off, no plan whatsoever, everything hit and hope, but at least we look confident in training 👍 #lofc
@OrientMeatPie: Weird interview. Knew what was coming but got schooled by yet another team that plays like that. Not tactically adept enough to counter it. And how does digging out individual players help? Not going to make them better is it? But slags off fans who do it…
@TheTippingTim: Can’t get on board with the dig at Stevenage’s style of play. They love to get it in the channels but we were far more direct and one-dimensional than they were today. It took us 20 minutes to get the ball on the floor.
@ScottG19912019: Not sure how positive I feel after that interview. No idea what game he was watching if we had “good spells”
@wallacerm1: Got bullied all over the pitch. If we know how they play why did we hoof it up to our players all game 🤷🏻♂️😂
@cgibson_89: Losing to sides who setup like this, who have physical players, who look to dominate set pieces etc is getting boring. It’s our undoing every time. You can’t out football everyone and we have to be able to deal with it at this level. We can’t do the basics @OrientOutlook #lofc
@jamezymaryan: Oh, the other team didn’t play the way you wanted so you could win? Awww diddums.
@Govey24: He’s genuinely complaining that we didn’t play a style of play that made it easier for his team to win. The man’s an absolute clown.
@ghop345: Did he watch his team today? They were about as direct as they could get 🤣🤣 weren’t exactly knocking it around the floor all game
@msorient: Summer recruitment looks really shambolic. To replace Currie with a kid from Palace, place him on Boco island isn’t great from Wellens. Mitchell at left back isn’t the answer. Squad looks completely disjointed @OrientOutlook The last few weeks we have been shocking #LOFC
@JmeRay72: A lot of football nowadays comes down to transition. Our slow side to side build up play makes it easier for teams to steal the ball & get on the front foot. Slow, sideways football is a tactic of the past. #LOFC
You must be logged in to post a comment Login