Ross Embleton said he felt “hurt” after Leyton Orient’s late defeat to Crewe Alexandra at the Breyer Group Stadium.

The O’s suffered a 2-1 loss at the hands of the Alex after James Jones rattled in a last minute winner.

Eddie Nolan had given Crewe the lead just after the half hour mark only for Jordan Maguire-Drew to capitalise on a defensive mistake to level, but the Orient forward was then guilty of missing a penalty in the second half which would’ve put his side ahead.

Speaking after the game, Embleton said: “Yes [I do feel hurt] but I feel like it’s another evening or another 90 minutes of hurt where we haven’t seen out a half or seen out a game. So yes, it hurts and I don’t think we deserved it but I’m fed up of people telling me that we didn’t deserve to get beat.

“I’ve had it probably three times here already this season, once or twice on the road, but there comes a time where people have got to stop feeling sorry for us and we’ve got to stop coming out of games where we walk away feeling a little bit let down.”

While Embleton didn’t feel as though his side deserved to lose the game as a result of their performance, he felt angry that the players didn’t heed the warnings Crewe had given them earlier in the game before snatching the win with two minutes to go.

He said: “I think it was two teams that like to play attacking football but my big disappointment was that it’s near a stage in the game where we’re playing against a team at the top of the league and we’ve left ourselves open.

“We got a warning in terms of [Chris] Porter getting in off the side of Marvin [Ekpiteta], we managed to evade that danger at the time and we’ve ended up almost replicating it and conceding from a nigh-on identical situation.

“We’ve got to be a little more mature, focussed, manage the game better. We had some criticism at the weekend about the number of bookings and fouls that we gave away but we’ve got to show that nastier side to us to see out a game.

“Last year our responsibility was to go out there and try to win every game but this year we’re playing against better opposition. If you open yourselves up too much to go and win it you’re going to leave yourself exposed to losing it, which is what we’ve done on a number of occasions already this season and it’s not good enough.”

The League Two schedule doesn’t get any kinder to Orient this coming weekend. Having already faced high-flying Exeter City and Crewe this week, the O’s will make the short journey to Colchester United on Saturday, a team well-established at this level, and Embleton is expecting another difficult assignment.

He said: “We’ve had a very very tough couple of weeks in terms of the opposition that we’ve come up against and then what starts to happen when you don’t pick up the results, whether you deserve them or not, then those games become tougher.

“I’m sure we’ll go to a Colchester team full of energy and full of confidence from their result that they’ve got this evening."