Leyton Orient head coach Ross Embleton insists his side ‘underperformed’ as they fell to a 1-0 defeat at home to Forest Green Rovers to see them slip out of the play-off places.

A 23rd minute strike from Nicky Cadden sealed the three points for the Rovers and ended the O’s rich vein of form at the Breyer Group Stadium.

But the boss believes they have to learn to pick up points when not at the races as no team is constantly at their best.

“I think it was probably one of those days where we didn’t reach the level that we want to hit, but what we have to do is realise that we’re all human beings, and people don’t perform to their very best every week,” Embleton said.

“We have shortfalls, off days, so we have to understand that there is going to be underperformances, but we need to then come through those, whereas at the moment we look like a team that are really good and win whereas when we’re not quite so good we get beat.

“We need to try bring that a little bit closer and come through games like today (Saturday) and still get some sort of result out of it.”

the visitors opened the scoring in the 23rd minute as a long ball out from goalkeeper Lewis Thomas went over the head of Sam Ling and into the feet of Bailey Cargill who pushed forward and cut the ball back to Nicky Cadden who stabbed the ball home to make it 1-0.

“I haven’t looked at it back yet, but we were overloaded on Sam’s side of the pitch, they’ve hit a long ball and it’s found one of those players. We’ve not dealt with that and left ourselves exposed.

“A poor goal to concede, but I'm not sure you one very often that you would accept as being a good goal, but disappointed.”

The boss was however not best pleased with the officiating as he felt Conor Wilkinson should have been awarded a penalty in the 15th minute while fouls should have been given on other occasions.

“It’s what we want from football, do we want people to chuck themselves all over the floor and scream and shout, which I saw quite a bit today (Saturday) outside the box and you win a free-kick yet you try to be honest and run through yet nothing.

“What puzzles me is there were a number of those opportunities for us, there was one where the guy has got Dan Happe in a bear hug as he’s trying to head it in the goal from a corner, Lee Angol also grabbing ran through and when I asked the referee at the end he said your player was grappling with their one.

“What?! On all three occasions. By no means will I point to the fact that the referee is the reason we got beat, but at the same time it helps you a little bit to make margins up when you make very clear opportunities and should be rewarded.”