As the ball rebounded to Jamie Donley, stationed on the edge of the box as Leyton Orient attacked a corner, the home crowd left their seats in anticipation.
After all, Donley has built a reputation for scoring stunners since his summer loan move east from Tottenham Hotspur. This time he mistimed his effort, with the ball flying over the bar. Five minutes later, and with five minutes of regular time remaining, he left the pitch at the Gaughan Group Stadium to a standing ovation, having helped Orient to the cusp of a crucial 1-0 win over London rivals Charlton Athletic.
However, with Donley watching from the bench, Charlton equalised from a corner in the second minute of added time and then, in almost identical fashion, got a winner in the seventh. The result lifts Charlton into the League One play-off places, while Orient drop to eighth.
While it is an unwelcome dent to Orient’s promotion hopes, it marks another game in which Donley made an impression. Ask anyone around the club, and they’ll tell you he’s flying. But it hasn’t always been so straightforward.
Rewind to the reverse fixture in August and Donley had barely been in the building for 24 hours before being thrown into the starting line-up, playing 70 minutes in a 1-0 defeat in south-east London. He kept his place for defeats to Birmingham City and Shrewsbury but was dropped to the bench for consecutive league wins against Reading and Stockport.
“As soon as he came into the fold, you saw that he possessed real quality,” Omar Beckles, Orient’s vice-captain, tells The Athletic. “You can see why Spurs regard him so highly; he’s got an eye for a pass. We saw that early on.
“But we had a really difficult start, and he was taken out of the team. He had to bide his time on the sidelines. We almost thought he was down and out because it’s difficult not making the squad for any young lad.”
While many young players from the pampered and protected world of an elite Premier League academy may have downed tools and pushed for a return to their parent club, Donley knuckled down and continued to impress during training. For Beckles, it speaks to his “humble” character, unlike some of the “entitled” young players he has experienced from other top-flight clubs.
“One of the question marks early on was whether he’s got the athleticism and physicality to impose himself on the game, or will the game pass him by?” says Beckles. “Naturally, that’s going to be in the back of the mind of any manager with a young No 10 with loads of ability — can he affect the game without the ball? But he kept his head down and trained like a million dollars. He worked really hard for us.”
It wasn’t until the 3-0 win over Bristol Rovers in December that Donley tasted his first victory as a starter.
After that win, just their fifth from their first 17 league matches, Orient went on a run and surged up the League One table. Richie Wellens’ side went unbeaten for 11 league matches — collecting 29 points from a possible 33 — with Donley starting every game. Over that period, he scored five league goals and laid on as many assists, with left-footed volleys in wins over Exeter City and Wrexham the picks of an impressive bunch.
Particularly eye-catching was a sumptuous pass to set up the second of Azeem Abdulai’s three goals in the 6-2 win at Exeter. But that was nothing compared to what came a little under two weeks later, when Donley delivered a moment Orient won’t forget in a hurry.
Having helped to dispossess Nico Gonzalez on the halfway line in the first half of their FA Cup fourth-round tie against Manchester City, Donley knocked the ball out of his feet and arrowed a shot from the edge of the centre circle that flew over the head of goalkeeper Stefan Ortega.
Donley was not credited with the goal, as the ball hit the bar and deflected off Ortega’s back before crossing the line, but it hasn’t stopped the hype.
At the time of writing, a video of the goal circulated by the FA Cup’s X account has been viewed more than 1.7 million times.
After the game, Spurs academy coach Sam Cox shared a video of the club’s youngsters celebrating the goal from the training ground. The audacity to attempt the shot on the biggest stage of his young career, never mind the near-perfect execution, is why many have him earmarked to achieve big things.
“I know a lot of the coaches at Spurs who have worked with him, and there’s no surprise,” says Beckles. “He’s scored from the halfway line before at youth team level. It’s nothing new to him — this is who he is. It’s just all coming together in the men’s environment.
“At this level, there’s nothing like his weight of pass. He doesn’t just pass on his safe side; he’s threading balls between lines and between centre-backs and full-backs with the weight of pass.
“He’s got Kevin De Bruyne-esque elements, but he’s got the graft in him. He’s got the basics and fundamentals and is willing to put his foot in.
“I like to pump up his tyres, calling him ‘Starboy’ and tell him he’s doing really well to make him feel good, but he shuts it down like, ‘Nah, shut up. Don’t worry about it’. He doesn’t want anything to go to his head.”
Any comparison to De Bruyne will raise eyebrows, but given space and time, Donley appears as capable as anyone of threading a pass through the eye of a needle.
Take this sequence from the home game against Reading, where he’s receiving the ball with time to turn towards their defence. With Charlie Kelman directly in front of Donley and in space, a midfield player without the quality (or bravery) could easily have played it forward to him.
Instead, he spots the run of former Spurs academy player Dilan Markanday on the right wing, who is being matched stride for stride by defender Abraham Kanu.
Donley takes on the higher-risk pass but executes it to perfection. He threads the ball in the tight gap — made even smaller by Kanu turning to face the ball and attempting an interception — to put Markanday through on goal.
Markanday keeps his composure, sitting Tyler Bindon down before scoring.
“He sees things quickly, so he wants to play quickly,” says Wellens. “When he receives the ball he’s always looking. He knows what’s around him.
“I think his best types of passes are towards the opposition. When the angle of pass isn’t on, he aims for the opposition legs and by the time it reaches their legs, the opposition keeps running and it reaches his target in a better position. He’s very good at passing through a player’s legs. If you watch a lot of clips of (Lionel) Messi, he passes the ball very similarly to him. He’s an exceptional passer of the ball.”
He’s not just dangerous in transition situations — he can open up deep blocks, too. In this instance below, against Bolton, Donley receives the ball in space on the wing and looks up to see a cluttered penalty box.
Donley resists the temptation to send a searching ball into that area, instead taking a touch out of his body before immediately delivering a driven pass towards Abdulai, who had ghosted into space towards the far post.
Donley executes the pass perfectly into Abdulai’s path, who centres a pass.
The ball reaches Kelman, who converts on the opposite post from close range.
While coaches should be keen to encourage Donley to continue attempting to break lines, he can occasionally be too eager to get the ball out of his feet and rush forward passes. Here is one instance where his desire to progress the ball too quickly caused a potentially promising Orient attack to break down prematurely.
Having received the ball in his half, Donley is in space with the Wrexham defence retreating.
As well as Sonny Perkins in space on the right wing, Darren Pratley is eating up ground in the middle of the pitch and appears the easier pass of the two.
Had Donley taken the ball out of his feet and immediately attempted a pass for his midfield team-mate, he could have helped it along to Perkins, thereby also taking out the covering Wrexham defender, who appeared caught in two minds on whether to press the ball or follow the runner.
However, Donley tried to switch the ball to Perkins and failed in his execution, giving the ball back to Wrexham and setting the opposition off on a potential transition opportunity.
Donley does not have separation pace, so he often looks to move the ball quickly once he receives it. Tottenham legend Harry Kane proves an elite burst of pace is not necessary if you use your body correctly and have the technical consistency to execute those passes. Still, it’s a high-risk strategy, particularly in this era of physical and transition-heavy football at the elite level. To make the step up, Donley will have to improve his pass selection and consistency, but the onus may not be on him to play forward so quickly at other clubs.
“He’s learning his position really well, and he will get away with his current speed, but we all know that in the Premier League, the top, top players have that extra little bit of pace as well,” says Wellens. “If you’ve not got lightning pace, you need to have two other things: technical ability, which he has bucketloads of, and a football brain.
“You might have players who are physically quicker, but their brain isn’t functioning as quickly as his. His football brain is very good, he sees things quickly, and that will compensate.
“If he can develop that part of his game, I’ve no doubt he’ll be a Premier League player.”
(Top photo: Paul Harding/Getty Images)