Curle 'can't gloss over' Cobblers' poor performance in O's defeat

Town were four unbeaten ahead of kick-off and hoping to move into the top 10 of League Two but they were totally out-of-sorts and deservedly beaten by Orient, who recorded only their third league victory of the season.

Although it took until 12 minutes after half-time for James Brophy to brilliantly hand the visitors an ultimately decisive 1-0 lead, the goal had been coming with Town never able to find their rhythm.

The defeat drops the Cobblers to 14th in the table and five points adrift of the play-offs.

"It was a poor performance, I can't lie and I can't even try and smudge it," admitted Curle. "I don't think we won first contact enough, we didn't get on the second balls enough and the times we did, I thought we lacked quality.

"I can't smudge it and I can't gloss over the fact that we were below-par today. We tried to be direct to win first contact, land on the second ball and then have that quality in the final third.

"But we didn't gain enough entries in the final third and we didn't do enough with it when we did get into good positions."

The key passage of play came shortly after half-time when Sam Hoskins hit the post and then, almost immediately, Orient moved ahead through Brophy's well-taken goal.

"We hit the post at 0-0 and that would have been a good time to score because goals change games," added Curle. "They had, what, probably one shot in the second-half? And that was on the breakaway."