Leyton Orient chairman Nigel Travis was quick to praise the job Ross Embleton has done at the club especially in numerous difficult circumstances.
The O’s are winless in seven games and have slipped down to 14th in League Two and decided to part company with Embleton.
Embleton, 39, first worked for Orient between 2000 and 2009, and was in charge of the club’s then Centre of Excellence before leaving to work for Tottenham Hotspur, Bournemouth and Norwich City in Academy roles.
He was appointed as first-team coach at Swindon Town in November 2015 under Martin Ling, but left in May 2017 and joined Orient a month later as assistant manager.
He led the club on its return to the Football League for the 2018/19 season, but stepped back to his assistant’s role only to move back into the head coach role again in January 2020.
“Ross did a great job stabilising the ship two or three times last year then we gave him the job and we were very optimistic that it was going to work out,” Travis said.
“I think are expectations were fulfilled for most of this season, Ross got us to as high as seventh, some may argue that we had one or two more games played over others but we were very pleased with the progress.
“We have this thing called the transfer committee, we met and decided to go for promotion, we were ambitious so we brought in four players that I think most people would agree have been great additions to the squad.
“We felt that we’d really enhanced the squad, we laid out some goals at that time about where we should go, and unfortunately the last seven games have been a real disappointment.
“I know we’ve tightened up at the back, which has been good, but we don’t look like scoring and we decided after the game that things had to change because this is a unique season.
“You’ve got Covid, clubs being financially supported by loans, and we felt we had the squad to get there and in terms of personnel we felt we should be a top five team.
“We decided to unfortunately to make a change. I wanted to say what a fantastic job Ross has done for the club. He was one of our first employees and he did a spectacular job supporting Justin Edinburgh on the move from the National League back to the Football League.
“He was at my house here when we had the sad news about Justin’s passing. Ross and I had long discussions about coaching and management.
“I think Ross will rise again as he showed lots of capabilities and like all situations I'm sure Ross will find the last few weeks as a learning opportunity.
“I want to publicly say thank you to Ross, he will go down in our history books as one of the very best, and he really contributed an awful amount to a club that he loves.”
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