Richie Wellens has vowed to play his part in improving representation in football and says he’ll only sign players who are good enough to play for Leyton Orient.
English football has failed to make meaningful progress in addressing the long-term under-representation of British South Asians in the game, with significantly less than one per cent of professionally contracted footballers hailing from the community – who remain the UK’s single-largest ethnic minority group.
Orient boss Wellens – who shared a dressing-room with former Newcastle United and Cardiff City striker Michael Chopra during a brief loan spell with Ipswich in his playing days – has proved as a head coach that he is prepared to give top South Asian talent a chance.
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Wellens managed Pakistan international and former Manchester United youngster Otis Khan in his first season as Orient boss – and has signed fellow British South Asians Sonny Perkins and Dilan Markanday this term, with the latter joining on loan from Blackburn after a successful first half of the campaign at Chesterfield.
Ahead of Thursday night’s League One visit of Stevenage, live on Sky Sports, Wellens welcomed Arvi Sahota – the founder of official Leyton Orient supporters’ group The Punjabi O’s – to the club’s training ground.
“Sonny’s got a lot of talent,” Wellens explains. “He was a wonderkid at West Ham.
Sonny Perkins and Dilan Markanday have impressed at Leyton Orient this term
“Then he got a move to Leeds. I think he’s had something like 14 goal contributions this year in his first season. That’s not bad, Sonny is a good football player.
“And then we obviously had a problem with injuries to Dan Agyei and Ollie O’Neill, and Dilan Markanday was having a brilliant season.
“I’ve watched Dilan loads for Tottenham and for Blackburn, and he was having a really good season at Chesterfield [that’s why I signed him].
Wellens: They have to be good enough
The Leyton Orient manager continued: “Also, the amount of South Asian players that must live within a five-hour radius (of the club).
“If they see a Dilan Markanday, who plays for Leyton Orient, or a Sonny Perkins, they’ll want to play. Mal Benning [at Shrewsbury Town for example] has also been around for a long time.
“But they have to be good enough. Then it’s just like a snowball effect.
“And when they see people they can aspire to you know what they do? They practise more because they want to be like them and that’s what makes the standard go up.”
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