Leyton Orient ‘nowhere near good enough’ at Stevenage says Wellens

The home side raced into a two-goal lead in just 11 minutes and O’s saw Idris El Mizouni dismissed for two bookable offences just before half-time.

Stevenage added a third goal in stoppage time to cut the gap at the top to just two points, with a game in hand.

And Wellens agreed it had been a bad day at the office for the long-time leaders.

“Poor start, we didn’t compete. The last one is obviously a counter-attack when we’re down to 10 men and it’s a mistake but the first two goals are shambolic from our point of view,” he told the club website.

“I’ll take more or less all the criticism, I think I got the team wrong. The way we set up was wrong.

“But players have to look in the mirror as well because if you don’t compete here – they’ve got a lot of results through competing, first balls, second balls – and every time we went long, we was short.

“And every time they went long, they were in behind and we was running back towards our own goal and making it tough for us.

“It’s a bad day at the office for us, it was an accumulation of things. The only benefit is Jamie McCart got 90 minutes, he needed that game. It’s a tough one to come into.

“Really bad day at the office and when we fill out that stand on the far side and we finish the game and there’s only a couple of hundred there, that breaks my heart, because it was nowhere near good enough today.”

Jamie Reid headed home after six minutes, when Carl Piergianni nodded on Terence Vancooten’s free-kick to give the hosts the perfect start.

And it was 2-0 soon after when Jordan Roberts cut in from the right to fire past Lawrence Vigouroux at his near post.

O’s were left with a mountain to climb after El Mizouni was given his marching orders by referee Scott Oldham and Wellens felt his side’s second-half response was too late, with Luke Norris adding a late third for Stevenage.

“Both bookings came from having too many touches,” he added.

“As a midfield player, you need to have a picture, you need to check your shoulder, make angles and be able to play one and two touch.

“I thought it was a foul and it makes Iddy handle the ball. I’m not going to blame the referee, he was poor today, but we have to take all the blame, we wasn’t good enough.

“It doesn’t take the manager coming in and not being happy at 45 minutes, we’re down to 10 men, we’re 2-0 down, to have a response.

“Stevenage played like they were second in the league and wanted it. We played like we were an end-of-season team, wanting the season to finish.

“We didn’t come here and represent a team that was at the top of the league, whereas Stevenage represented a team that was pushing us all the way. We was nowhere near it.”