Richie Wellens admits Leyton Orient ‘weren’t going to beat disciplined Mansfield Town’
Leyton Orient are currently struggling with a lengthy injury list and manager Richie Wellens was happy to come away with a point from their clash with Mansfield Town.
Stags played out a 0-0 stalemate in East London on Tuesday to take themselves up to 54 points, matching last season’s overall tally. It was also an important result for the O’s, who are now four points clear of the danger zone.
Orient have three games left before their season ends and manager Richie Wellens is pleased with the midweek result, given the circumstances of his side’s fitness struggles. Speaking to club media after the game, he admitted he knew his side wouldn’t win against Mansfield Town with a significant amount of his key players on the side-lines.
“We didn’t play well, the injury list is ridiculous so I’m happy with a point,” Wellens told Orient. “We’ve got 10 or 11 injuries, it’s huge. Our supporters want us to open up and go and win the game. If I’ve got Theo Archibald, Ollie O’Neill and Aaron Connolly on the bench, I’m saying ‘go on, go and win us the game’. But we weren’t going to win that game, so it’s important that we keep a clean sheet and a point.”
Praise for Nigel Clough and Mansfield Town performance
Wellens was very complimentary of Nigel Clough’s Mansfield Town and what they’ve achieved this season. Stags are now seven points clear of the bottom four with five games left to bank as many points as possible.
“We didn’t start the game well. We started with a back four and got run ragged for ten minutes, so we had to change a little bit to match their system because we didn’t get close. Then I thought for the majority of the game, it was a ‘they cancelled us out and we cancelled them out’ type of game,” the Orient boss continued.
“You look at the guys they bring off the bench – Rhys Oates and Will Evans… I think they’ve got a really good manager and I think they’ve had a good season. They’ll probably be disappointed with where they’ll finish in the league but with the FA Cup run, they’ve played a lot of games and we know what that feels like last year. But they’ve lost one game in nine.
“They’re a good team – organised, disciplined, they can play a four, a five, loads of variations of a five. You look at more or less all of the players, they all have hundreds of games. So they’re a really experienced team.”