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Many of the headlines when Tottenham visit Brisbane Road to face Leyton Orient on Tuesday will centre around Harry Kane, and the striker’s sponsorship of the East Londoners.
While true, this isn’t the only link between the two clubs.
Former Spurs defender and O’s boss Justin Edinburgh will also rightly be honoured ahead of the fixture, after his tragic death.
PA reporter George Sessions, who covered Orient for four years, remembers Edinburgh fondly:
“It will be a special game for both clubs for several reasons, but mainly due to Justin Edinburgh. He spent close to ten years at Spurs as a player and won the FA Cup and League Cup – more trophies than plenty who have worn the Lilywhites jersey. He then embarked on a career in management which took him to Leyton Orient, where he guided the O’s to their first league title in 49 years.
He helped O’s win promotion back to the Football League before he died in June 2019 after a cardiac arrest. His passing occurred less than a month after he had managed Orient at Wembley in the FA Trophy final and Tuesday will be a chance for both clubs to honour a wonderful man who meant so much to both sets of supporters.
“It will be an emotional occasion for Justin’s family, who set up the Justin Edinburgh 3 Foundation but another chance to remember him and everything he achieved at the two teams.”
Current Orient boss Ross Embleton also has connections to Spurs, having controlled their pre-academy set-up during his early coaching career.
More on Justin Edinburgh
Burns Night win for Orient on the day they rename stand in honour of Edinburgh
Justin Edinburgh still in thoughts as Leyton Orient host Newport
Leyton Orient announce death of manager Justin Edinburgh
Justin Edinburgh 3 Foundation (JE3) (opens in new window)
Embleton joined the club as Academy Integration Manager in December 2009, after feeling he needed to leave Orient’s set-up, where he was the Youth Development Manager for nine years, in order to learn from top professionals in the field.
Speaking on the LO Down Podcast, Embleton delved deeper into his role at Spurs:
“My role was to oversee the sevens to elevens at the Academy, to manage our Development Centres that we had across London and also manages the coaches within that.
What we tried to do at Spurs was develop a process where the coaches fitted in. I managed the coaches, the process that they followed, their qualifications to improve them in the hope that they’d follow a similar path to the kids and end up one day working in the Academy and managing age groups.
It was a really interesting job and it gave me the opportunity to go and work with people like John McDermott (pictured below), Alex Inglethorpe, Chris Ramsey and Perry Suckling as well. It was a real good opportunity to learn from them every day and up-skill myself whilst working with some of the best young kids in the country.”
Ultimately, the current O’s manager found his opportunities to coach at Spurs were becoming limited and decided to move elsewhere, again in the hope to continue developing and learning something new every day.
His next step would be to AFC Bournemouth, where he took over the youth programme following Shaun Brooks’ promotion to assistant manager.
Brooks, who had previously held the position, enjoyed a strong relationship with the East London coach and offered him the chance to make the next step in his development.
Working with the Under 18’s everyday, Embleton, who had moved down to Bournemouth with his wife and young family, was now able to coach at a higher standard and in his own words became ‘creative with his coaching’.
Having spent all of his coaching career working with young players he describes as ‘inner city, tough London kids’, the challenge now presented was totally different. The mindset had now shifted, and many of the Bournemouth youth players were much more laid-back to what he had previous experienced.
His ability to motivate and coach these players enabled him to expand his knowledge further. As many know in football, things can quickly, and soon he’d had left his role at Bournemouth and moved his family back to East London.
Searching for a job, he eventually landed a recruitment role at Norwich which he recounts as ‘the hardest job I’ve ever had, in terms of I wasn’t very good at it if I’m brutally honest’. Tasked with identifying the best players within certain areas or clubs, Embleton says he realised then that there ‘is a completely different way of watching football’.
“A call from Martin Ling took the now-Orient boss to Swindon as a first-team coach. Taking a pay-cut to accept the job at the County Ground, the role ‘changed his life’.”
Unable to switch off from coaching, he revealed the difficulties of the task for him.
“I was terrible at it. I was going and I was watching the game, I wasn’t watching individuals. I wasn’t watching players. I was watching and thinking why has the coach done that, why are they playing 4-4-2, why are they playing three at the back.”
Struggling to take to the role, Embleton eventually got made redundant when Norwich were relegated from the Premier League in 2016.
After some ‘ducking and diving’, he went back to Spurs, working within their ‘Football in the Community’ programme, a project to which he’d contributed previously.
The ability to return back to Spurs exhibits Embleton’s ability to forge meaningful relationships at a club he often references as ‘we’ during his talk on a podcast with hosts, Julian and Brendan.
Experiences in China, America and Germany followed before an 18-month stint working at Epping Forest College.
The former non-league player, who played under his dad at Stansted after his release from Orient, compares his role there as akin to Coach Carter.
“I had stabbings, I had muggings. On one occasion, there was such a fight at one of our games, a kid in my team pulled a Stanley knife out on one of the opposition and I was laid on top of him holding the knife in his hand.
“There was things I done in that 18-month period that sends a shiver down my spine now”
Despite the clearly difficult circumstances, the relationship he built with those kids and the subsequent impact on his coaching he described as ‘mind-blowing’.
A call from Martin Ling took the now-Orient boss to Swindon as a first-team coach. Taking a pay-cut to accept the job at the County Ground, the role ‘changed his life’. The commute meant time spent away from his family had increased but so had the opportunity to coach at a higher level.
He’d landed his first role in professional football, whilst working alongside two coaches he respected and admired in Ling and assistant Luke Williams.
Ultimately, the role at Swindon became tougher as time went on, especially when former Spur Tim Sherwood came in as Director of Football at the club.
Embleton talks about ‘winning people over as a bloke’ in order to get players to interact with his sessions.
His personality comes over the more footage you see of the coach, players clearly appreciating his honesty and up-front style throughout his coaching career.
The former Orient youth player has had to win over O’s fans since becoming manager of the club, after previously taking interim charge of the club on three separate occasions.
The 38-year-old’s history with the club may make Tuesday’s fixture even more special as the two teams meet in a competitive fixture for the first time since 2001.
That day, a 90th-minute Gary Doherty was required to secure victory for Tottenham, the O’s supporters hoping for an equally tight fixture in the Carabao Cup third round.
Sessions also explained Embleton’s current style of management:
“Ross is a very modern manager with excellent man management skills but a lot more than just that. Tactically he is very astute, he has a number of formations he can use and various styles of football too.
I think he would like Leyton Orient to play attractive, progressive football as much as possible, but also appreciates how difficult it can be in League Two and therefore sometimes has to substitute style for substance. Given the short space of time he has been in charge, he has adapted really well and appears to be growing in confidence as a head coach.”
When speaking to an Orient fan about the clash, they described Embleton as ‘Orient through and through’ having started his coaching career at the O’s Centre of Excellence.
They are unbeaten in five this season, having conquered Forest Green Rovers and Plymouth Argyle to set up the tie against Spurs. Tottenham face Orient amidst a run of four games within a week, as a trip to Macedonia and a home fixture against Newcastle follow Sunday’s win in Southampton.
The busy schedule may mean Jose Mourinho decides to field players from the academy that Embleton was once employed by, Harvey White and Dennis Cirkin amongst those vying for a starting berth.
Whether Tottenham decide on a stronger side or not, Orient will be keen on an upset. Should it occur, it would undoubtedly be Ross Embleton’s finest day in football management, after a long road from Tottenham’s academy a decade ago.
Report: Two late goals save point for O’s. Leyton Orient 2 : 2 Mansfield
