Richie Wellens has plenty of history in League Two, but the Leyton Orient boss is now breaking new ground with a team who have the scope to eclipse the levels he reached with Swindon Town back in 2020.
No side in the history of English football's fourth tier have ever made a better start than the O's, who have amassed a staggering 28 points from a possible 30 in the opening weeks of the new campaign.
Orient have been reinvigorated by Wellens, a Manchester United academy graduate who evolved into a midfield marshal for the likes of Leicester City and Doncaster Rovers during a playing career that spanned almost two decades.
After moving into coaching, Wellens guided Swindon to the League Two title in style two years ago and is bidding to replicate that feat with his new club - but he is adamant that nobody in East London will be getting ahead of themselves anytime soon in the wake of Orient's electric start to the campaign.
"It's been a good start, but that's all it is right now," Wellens tells Mirror Football . "It is important to have a good start; I think Forest Green showed that last year. Having a good start does stand you in good stead, but we want much more than that. The players have been fantastic. We're in a really good place."
But prior to Wellens' arrival, the club were in anything but fine mettle. The Londoners have endured a tumultuous time since they clinched promotion to the EFL back in 2019. Justin Edinburgh, the man responsible for steering the O's back into the Football League, tragically passed away just weeks later. Understandably with Edinburgh's untimely passing, the club's momentum waned.
Since then, back-to-back campaigns had been and gone without any real chance of progression towards League One - the level that accommodated the O's for nine years prior to their slide into obscurity under the previous regime led by the much-maligned Francesco Becchetti.
Lifelong fan Nigel Travis rescued the club alongside Kent Teague, and with Kenny Jackett at the helm, Leyton Orient began last year as one of the favourites for promotion. But after a steady start, things quickly began to unravel for Jackett, who had enjoyed success at both Millwall and Wolves.
Those struggles meant the O's would have to endure one of the bleakest spells in the entire EFL last term. The Londoners went a staggering three months without winning a single match - a spell that quickly saw them plummet from the upper echelons of the league towards the dreaded drop zone.
"Our confidence was just gone," admits club captain Darren Pratley, who was part of the team that endured a horrific 16-game winless run between December and March.
"Once you lose three, four [in a row], then confidence is gone. If you'd have said after the first 10, 15 games we'd be struggling to stay up, then I don't think anyone would have believed you. But it looked like we was going, to be honest. If we didn't make the change, I think it could have been a bad story for us."
Unsurprisingly, the club decided a change had to be made. Jackett and Leyton Orient parted ways on February 22 - meaning new chief executive Mark Devlin was tasked with sourcing a head coach just two days after starting his role at Brisbane Road.
"It was a bit of a baptism of fire," Devlin confesses. " But I knew what I was coming into because I'd come under my own steam to watch a few games to get a feel for the club. I think it's fair to say that things had gone stale."
Devlin speaks of a disconnect that had formed between the club and the fanbase. But the discontent ran deeper than just results. Pratley admits that the club "didn't have a real way of playing". Devlin also stressed that there was a real desire amongst the club hierarchy to implement a clear footballing philosophy.
"Certain people are more engaging than others. We're all human beings and operate in certain ways," he added. "The board decided that we need to make a change."
Wellens quickly came to the fore as the search for the new O's head coach got underway. He is only 42 but has a winning pedigree; after just four-and-a-half years in management, he has already garnered a reputation as one of the EFL's most exciting young coaches and has a League Two title and an EFL trophy triumph on his resume.
Devlin adds: "What really impressed us what he wanted to do in terms of a playing style. Richie also stressed that he wanted the players, himself and his coaching staff all to engage with fans."
Implementing a clear style of play was paramount to Wellens, who has insisted on more than one occasion that getting players on board and comfortable with his philosophy was his primary goal at the club. In that respect, he and the club were instantly in sync.
And for Wellens, who has worked in tumultuous circumstances before, the disconnect at Brisbane Road was nothing to be overawed by - and the backing of the "exceptional" Leyton Orient hierarchy made his decision straightforward.
"I've never gone into a situation where a club is absolutely flying," Wellens adds. "I take over at Oldham, they're bottom of the league. The fans aren't happy with the amount of money the club were spending. It's the same situation at Swindon, they're 20th in the league and there's a disconnect between the chairman and the supporters. At Salford, we had no fans because of Covid, and then I go into the Doncaster job where they'd lost Darren Moore in circumstances they weren't happy with."
But how did this challenge compare? Despite the fact that the club was in the middle of a horrific winless run, Wellens quickly set about bringing positivity back to the club and recalls that the mood following his arrival was "fantastic" because he "didn't give anybody any other option".
That's a stance that Pratley, aged 37, concurs with. The veteran midfielder has seen many managers during an impressive playing career that has seen him grace all four tiers of the English game. But even he admits that Wellens' impact "seemed different".
"I think at the time that the whole club knew we needed a change," Pratley adds. "He was so positive when he came in. On his first day, he reassured everyone and gave everyone confidence and all of a sudden, we had a structure and an identity. I think the fact he's come out the game not so long ago made it easier for him to relate to us in a way. He gave us confidence and that's carried through into the first ten games of this season."
Wellens' impact was instant. The O's, who had silently slipped down the standings, took 11 points from his first five games at the helm; a tally that effectively ensured their Football League survival.
That afforded Wellens the chance to experiment during Leyton Orient's final few games of the season - an opportunity he describes as "invaluable".
"A word that gets thrown around a lot in football is philosophy," Wellens says. "And what a lot of managers want to do is play a certain way, but as soon as that goes wrong, they want to change how they play - I'm not like that. I want a certain way of playing and that's non-negotiable.
"If it's not working and it's not getting results, then we will find a way to make that way of playing better. I'm not stubborn - I just believe the way that I play will get me results over a period of time. I'm not someone looking for a short fix without having a bigger picture.
"We were safe pretty quickly. That gave us the chance to play about with the team. We found out what works and some things that didn't. There was nothing from the chairman to say, 'No, we don't want to do that'. They just let me get on with it."
Importantly, Leyton Orient kept hold of the nucleus of their squad this summer after finishing in 13th spot last year. There were no wholesale changes; Hector Kyprianou was prised away for an undisclosed fee by Peterborough, but other than that, the club retained the services of every other player who had a key part in their resurgent run during the closing weeks of the previous campaign .
"We made massive changes to the team [in the final games of last season]," Wellens explains. "Okay, it cost us three points that day, but the information we got from that was worth far more than that. Long-term approach, long-term thinking, but when you're a manager and you're free to make those decisions and nobody is pestering you in the background, it's a lot easier to make those decisions," Wellens says.
"Those games worked out perfectly for me. We made really good decisions in the summer but those good decisions started last season. We felt that continuity would be important and that we'd be in and around the top 10. We didn't make too many changes over the summer; the nucleus of our team was still there."
Already, that stance has reaped dividends. The club boast a seven-point cushion in the automatic spots and, along with Portsmouth, are one of only two unbeaten teams left in the entire EFL.
Wellens adds: "Nobody can take that [record] away from us. That's proven now - we've been the best team there's every been at this stage of the season. But we've got to build on that."
The impressive job that Wellens has done at Brisbane Road is vindication for stepping back into management after tough spells at Salford and Doncaster - with the former a role that Wellens admits that, in hindsight, he shouldn't have taken on.
"The biggest thing for me is the experiences that I've been on have helped me. I've realised what my weaknesses were and I've worked on them. I'm a much, much better manager than I was six months ago and I'm a far, far better manager than I was four-and-a-half years ago.
"It's been eventful. I've gone through probably every experience; foreign takeovers, working for tough owners, working with owners who want to play a different style, winning leagues and cups and right down to being sacked. I've been through quite a lot of different scenarios and that's made me much calmer in my approach."
As well as repairing the fractured relationship between the club and their fanbase, Wellens has certainly made a sizeable impression on Pratley, who has just finished his own UEFA A License.
After being honest enough to admit that he wasn't particularly gleaning any knowledge last year, prior to Wellens' arrival, the midfielder has stressed how he is now "learning every day" - even though he is in the twilight years of his career.
Pratley adds on Wellens: "I played under Roberto Martinez and Brendan Rodgers when they were at a very similar age to the gaffer and I think he will go on and have a great career. I believe, at some point, he will go to the very top. He's got something about him; he knows the game tactically and he has a good relationship with the players and the fans love him as well. I think he will go to the top."
And while that is a stance that Devlin agrees with, the O's chief, who held a similar position at Brentford during their rise through the leagues, is adamant that the club have the scope to grow alongside their current boss.
Devlin adds: "Richie was absolutely right for what we needed at the time when he joined us. As I say, there was a disconnect, one of the things that impressed was Richie's enthusiasm to work on the pitch and engage with the fanbase. His man-management style is second to none. The way he cares about his players and his coaching staff, the way he thinks about the game, everything.
"Sometimes it's just horses for courses; I think Richie's found a good home here. He's got a great relationship with the board and the fans absolutely adore him. More than any manager I've ever worked with, he's gone above and beyond on everything he said he would. He's often the catalyst for some of the engagement.
"I really do feel we've got everything in place here [with Wellens] to get this club promoted, because we have aspirations to get into League One and then push on and give it a real tilt to go further up the pyramid. There's no reason why a club of our size can't do that.
"I worked at Brentford until 2018 - I don't think anyone would have believed you had you said when I joined back in 2011 that we'd be a Premier League team within a decade! It's exciting times here."
For Wellens, the immediate focus is Saturday's clash against Newport County as he bids to add another League Two title to his resume. And he sees similarities between the O's and Swindon Town side he invigorated during his two-year stint in Wiltshire.
"I see massive similarities [between the clubs] and I think there's a lot of scope for improvement [here]. We have the potential to be a top 10 League One club - and once you're a top 10 League One club, you're in the mix to win promotion to the Championship.
"Even if you only have a year in the Championship, you can build to be the strongest League One team in the Championship and build to stay there. A bit like Rotherham and Paul Warne - I think Warney's won promotion three times and been relegated a few times, but they've always had an infrastructure that allows them to progress and it looks like this year they are gonna do really well.
"We just have to stay humble, realise what has brought us that success like hard work and a desire to compete and stick with it. You don't win nine and draw one at our level unless you've got a good spirit.
"We're not like a Manchester City who have sheer quality throughout the pitch who can win every week. At our level, you need everybody on it every single training session and every single matchday. But the players have been absolutely fantastic and deserve everything that's coming their way."
