The O’s owner Francesco Becchetti’s bizarre decisions have dragged the club down to the depths of League Two and left furious fans fearing the worst

The upstairs room at the Birkbeck Tavern in Leyton is supposed to hold 120 people. On Thursday night it felt as though double the number had made it their business to be there and, five minutes into the meeting of the Leyton Orient Fans’ Trust (Loft), the call went up from the back.

There were still more stuck outside and on the stairs – could everybody, please, budge up? And so those seated at the front shuffled forward. It was like one of those chair races from the old school days and, briefly, there were smiles at the silliness of it all.

Nobody is laughing at the situation that the 135-year-old club finds itself in and the headline details provide merely the broadest of brushstrokes. In May 2014 the Os were denied a place in the Championship after a penalty shootout loss to Rotherham United in the League One play-off final. Today they sit second from bottom of League Two and nobody at the Birkbeck could say with any assurance that they would lift themselves above the cut-off into non-league football by the end of the season.

Orient, who play at Colchester on Saturday, are going down in every sense. Their squad, on paper, ought to be contending for the play-offs, at least, but football is not played on paper. It is played by meticulously prepared and highly motivated teams and Orient have come to look a long way from what is required on both counts.

The club are on to their eighth manager in a little over two years – including caretakers, which is probably an accurate description of them all – and Alberto Cavasin, a 60-year-old Italian, whose previous job was in the final months of the 2010-11 season, when he oversaw Sampdoria’s relegation from Serie A, has one win and six defeats from his seven matches.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Leyton Orient’s owner, Francesco Becchetti. Photograph: Jordan Mansfield/Getty Images

This is Cavasin’s first experience of English football. He does not speak the language and he is struggling to get his messages across, via his translator – Matteo Gerardo Festa, the son of Gianluca Festa, the former Internazionale and Middlesbrough defender. The training is stop-start, because of the need for translation, and there is the clear sense that confusion has gripped. Communication problems have been a frequent lament.

It is the club’s owner and president, Francesco Becchetti, who is the villain of the piece in the eyes of the Loft members. The 50-year-old Italian businessman, who made his fortune in waste management and recycling, and founded the TV station Agon Channel, which was based in Albania and broadcast in Italy, took over at Brisbane Road in July 2014, when he bought out the previous owner, Barry Hearn, for £4m.

Becchetti has since invested £6m in a combination of equity and loans but it is not the colour of his money that has driven many Os fans to distraction, rather how, and on whom, he has chosen to spend it. There have been expensive mistakes in the transfer market, amid a remarkable churn of players – not one of the match-day squad from the 2014 play-off final remains at the club – and off-field, the turnover of staff has been similarly high.

Orient have always been a family club that occupies a valued space in the east London community but the connection has come to feel undermined, as Becchetti has dispensed with experienced employees – many of whom are lifelong supporters – such as Matt Porter, who was the chief executive under Hearn for eight years.

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Becchetti replaced Porter with Alessandro Angelieri, who had been the head of commercial affairs at the Agon Channel and a driver of the station’s X-Factor-style football show, which was produced during the 2014-15 season. It saw boys from Italy come over to compete for a professional contract at Orient and, with them playing on the Brisbane Road pitch, it quickly came to be considered a farce in some quarters at the club.

Bizarrely, the winner never did join up with Orient and the Agon Channel would be taken off air towards the end of 2015, after Becchetti saw his assets in Albania seized by the country’s government. They had issued a warrant for his arrest in June of that year, which related to alleged fraud and money-laundering over a failed hydroelectric scheme that had supposedly cost them tens of millions of euros in grants and unpaid taxes.

The Albanian government requested that Becchetti be extradited to face trial but, in July of this year, a British judge turned down the request. Becchetti has described the allegations against him as “groundless and politically and improperly motivated”.

Becchetti’s recruitment processes and criteria for senior positions at Orient – on the technical and administrative sides – have been questioned by the Loft members, with one particular case seeming to highlight a lack of joined-up thinking.

Fans believe they must be ready if and when Becchetti leaves and have written a recovery plan

When Roberto Gagliardi, a former non-league goalkeeper, was hired after Becchetti’s takeover, it was, in part, to help out with translation. He would, however, become the club’s goalkeeper coach in December 2014 only to leave at the end of the season, after the faintly ludicrous relegation from League One under Fabio Liverani. Gagliardi went to Welling United, where he worked as the goalkeeper coach, but, in February of this year, he returned to Orient as the head of recruitment.

Two things were plain at the Loft meeting. First, the members have lost all confidence in Becchetti and the other two directors on the club’s board – Angelieri and Vito Miceli, the chief operating officer. And, second, they unanimously believe that the time has come where something has to be done.

It speaks volumes that, four weeks ago, Loft had 350 members whereas now there are 600 and, for context, this is at a club that has 3,000 season-ticket holders. It reflects the urgency of the situation and the imperative to make their voices heard because, from their little corner of the capital, they fear that nobody is aware of their crisis and, if they are, they are not listening.

Loft passed a few resolutions on Thursday night, the most immediate being to stage a peaceful protest against the Becchetti regime at the next home game, which is against Blackpool on Saturday 19 November. It will be staged, jointly, with members of the Blackpool Supporters’ Trust, who have grievances against their club’s owner, Owen Oyston.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Leyton Orient fans plan to protest against Francesco Becchetti ‘s ownership in the match against Blackpool on 19 November. Photograph: Alan Walter/Action Images

Both sets of supporters will march from the Birkbeck to Brisbane Road, and they intend to display banners, declaring that they want their clubs back. There are also plans to do something during the match, possibly in the 18th minute and between the 81st and 87th minutes – as Orient and Blackpool were founded in 1881 and 1887, respectively.

Loft would like to engage in dialogue with Becchetti to explore ways in which his tenure could become more stable and productive but the chances of that happening are slim. Instead, they believe that they must be ready if and when Becchetti leaves and, to that end, they have written a recovery plan and are in the process of trying to mobilise major financial backing for what would be a fan-driven takeover. There was also apocalyptic talk at the meeting of an AFC Wimbledon-style “Phoenix club”.

Becchetti has made some bad choices and one of the worst was his appointment of Mauro Milanese, the former Italy defender, as sporting director in the summer of 2014. By January 2015 he had been dismissed following claims of serious misconduct.

Milanese would sue for wrongful dismissal but Mrs Justice Whipple ruled in May of this year that his handling of an agreement involving a 14-year-old academy player was a serious breach of trust and constituted gross misconduct. Milanese was found to have tried to pressure the boy, who was wanted by several leading clubs, including Arsenal, and his father into signing with a particular agent.

What also emerged at the high court were the details of some of Milanese’s excesses on the transfer market. When he oversaw the signing of the Italy defender Andrea Dossena, he gave him a weekly wage of £7,677 and the agent involved a fee of £25,730.

The agent of the striker Darius Henderson, who joined from Millwall, received £46,800 and the defender Shane Lowry, who also came from Millwall, was given a weekly wage worth £3,800, which was set to rise to £4,050 after the first year. The Guardian understands that Henderson was given £9,000 a week, plus a signing-on fee of £150,000, and other additions such as Jay Simpson and Jobi McAnuff were on lucrative deals.

Some of the motivational tactics on Becchetti’s watch have been dubious

None of the big signings could be said to have worked out and it is worth noting that every senior player from the squad that had made it to Wembley in 2014 was earning from a little over £2,200 a week to a little under £2,000 a week. None were granted pay rises and many came to feel let down.

Milanese was involved in the notorious incident after the team’s 2-0 home defeat to Colchester United in September 2014, when he went into the dressing room and told the manager at the time, Russell Slade, that he would be sacked if he did not win the next game at Notts County. Slade kept his job, despite a 1-1 draw, but, when Cardiff City came calling for him the following week, he upped sticks and left.

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Some of the motivational tactics on Becchetti’s watch have been dubious and they have included the decision to call in the players for two weeks of tough training at the end of the relegation season. It was difficult to see that as anything other than a punishment. Then there was the Waltham Abbey Marriott affair when, after the defeat at Hartlepool in November 2015, the players and staff were ordered to stay at the hotel for a week.

The issue of interference from Becchetti in team selection has also been a bone of contention. “There was a lot of interference from above,” Ian Hendon, the manager from May of last year to January of this, told BBC London. “Did it go as far as being told who to pick? They tried, I’ve got to say. I wanted to do the job my way. That probably wasn’t how they wanted it done. When you are out on the training ground and you have four of the entourage, if you like, standing around on the side of the pitch and watching every move you’re making and reporting back to the owner every day, it is difficult.”

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Now, though, is not the time to look back. Now, as some of the club’s supporters have concluded, is the time for action.