Bob Mills paid an emotional tribute to Justin Edinburgh saying he was the man who helped save Leyton Orient.
Edinburgh died on Saturday at the age of 49 after suffering a cardiac arrest last week.
The football community has been in mourning following his untimely death with hundreds of tributes being paid to the Orient manager.
talkSPORT co-host, and O’s fan, Mills spoke about Edinburgh on Jim White’s show on Monday.
He said: “He’s the man who saved our football team because we were in free fall. We had been relegated, we were no longer in the league and in the conference.
“Nigel Travis had come in and Martin Ling had come in and they had put the pieces in place and they had appointed a manager and it still wasn’t working and we were in the bottom four of the conference and were on our way to playing in the Conference South.
“For a team the size of Leyton Orient and the bills we had to pay to keep running meant basically the end of the club as we knew it. It would have dissolved and become a smaller unit, which we still would have supported.
“Our club basically would have been finished and we brought in Justin Edinburgh and he turned things around.”
Click Here: bape jacket cheap
Edinburgh got Orient promoted back to the football league and should have been preparing for life in League Two next season.
“He didn’t get any new players particularly, he had the same squad he had but he rebuilt the team and gave them the confidence and gave them the joy of playing again,” Mills added.
“He gave back to us the pride of being Leyton Orient supporters as we had started to lose it.
“For all the jokingness of it, ‘oh we are in the conference’, we were starting to lose it and it was a big part of our lives and it was taken away from us. He gave us that back.
“The one thing I do hold very dear is that on the last game of the season, when they were parading round and the trophy was there and was jumping around and jolly, I did get the chance to shake his hand and say thank you.
“I hope that he knew it was an honour for us to have him as our manager and will be forever grateful for what he did for us.”
Leyton Orient also posted a special video tribute on their Twitter page on Monday in memory of Edinburgh.