EFL manager tears into his own ’embarrassing and shambolic’ team in brutal interview

Leyton Orient boss Richie Wellens slammed his team’s ‘shambolic’ performance after crashing out of the FA Cup on Friday night.

The O’s, 13th in League One, were convincingly beaten 4-0 against Wellens’ former club Salford and will now miss out on the potentially lucrative third round.

The League Two side took a 23rd-minute lead thanks to Killian Cahill own goal before late strikes from Kallum Cesay, Fabio Borini and Kelly N’Mai sealed victory.

The result left Wellens seething and the 45-year-old called out his players in a brutal post-match interview.

What did Wellens say about his players?

The interviewer began by saying, ”Hard luck tonight” to which Wellens quickly intervened with, “Hard luck? It wasn’t hard luck.”

And that opened the floodgates as Wellens tore into his underperforming players.

“From our point of view nowhere near good enough,” he told TNT Sports. “Turned up, first 20 minutes, slow, boring, no tempo, no desire.

“For as bad as were were you have to give them (Salford) credit.”

Wellens, who enjoyed spells at Blackpool, Leicester and Doncaster in his playing days, revealed a major concern with his players that he had noticed prior to kick off.

“Too many of us sulking, (saying the) pitch is not good enough. I heard them speaking after the warm up,” Wellens added.

“Well they (Salford) played on the same pitch and could deal with the ball.

“For us, nowhere near good enough. Too inconsistent at the moment. When we get beat we’re conceding too many goals. When we play well, we win and we look good.

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“Today, the first goal was a goalkeeping mistake. The second goal, we roll it out, it goes over Omar’s (Beckles’) foot, we give a goal away.

“The third goal Jack Simpson stands on the ball on the halfway line and the fourth goal…the goals are ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous.

“They were miles better than us.”

No excuses

Wellens was pressed on whether the pre-match pitch complaints created a negative that transcended into his side’s performance, however the Orient boss quickly shut down that notion.

“They can’t make excuses,” he said. “We played at Tamworth in the last game. The pitch is a lot better than Tamworth’s.

“Even when we were clearing it we couldn’t kick the ball. The technique wasn’t good enough.

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“Decision making, angles to work early to be able to play on a not-so-good pitch.

“They were well worthy winners in terms of our performance. It was embarrassing and shambolic.”

A disgruntled Wellens revealed it is not the first time his side have delivered a similar style performance.

“We’ve had two of these before,” Wellens added. “We’ve had Mansfield away, we’ve had Wycombe away.

“Sometimes when you have players who are new to the club, you get inconsistencies and you’ve also got young players who are starting out their careers.

“Dom Ballard is the second highest goalscorer but he’s having a little inconsistency in the way he plays. There’s a couple of others.

“But listen, we’re a young group, we’ll batten down the hatches and go again.

“Our supporters have had a day off work or finished early and come up here to support us. That was nowhere near good enough.”

Wellens led Leyton Orient to the FA Cup fourth round last season and famously led 1-0 in their tie against Manchester City before Pep Guardiola’s men went on to edge the match 2-1.

In this year’s competition, they nicked a 1-0 win at National League outfit Tamworth but there will be no further heroics this time around.