LEYTON Orient chairman Nigel Travis admits "we screwed up" in appointing Carl Fletcher as the club's boss.

Fletcher, 39, left his role as Cherries loan manager to take over at League Two O's in October, but was dismissed yesterday having won none of his five matches in charge.

Discussing the decision to part company with Fletcher, Travis explained to talkSPORT: "We really thought Carl was going to be the perfect person – very strong technical background, great coaching pedigree, very strong history at a club we truly admire which is Bournemouth and previous management experience in League Two.

"What happened, in short, is the fit wasn't right, the cultural fit wasn't right.

"We don't blame him, we're going to blame ourselves. We'd recommend Carl because he did some terrific things on the training field, but it just wasn't the way we did things.

"It's gone spectacularly wrong and we recognise that.

"I think the thing that didn't work was the engagement with our community, the engagement with our players, with the coaches, the club, the fans and we could see people were not enjoying themselves.

"They weren't having the joy that we believe is important in our club. We decided that rather than letting this go on, be fair to Carl, be fair to us, we had to make a change."

He added: "The key thing is we screwed up. Carl didn't screw up, we screwed up.

"He is a great coach, he demonstrated he is a great coach. I think somehow we put him in a spot where we had to step up and handle a culture that probably needs some unique talents.

"You have to find a way to break into that culture, to really engage with the fans, the coaches, the players, to energise them and somehow that didn't happen."