Ollie Palmer admits he has had to be patient in front of goal and the striker hopes he can take his FA Cup form into the league.

The Orient forward has only scored once in League Two this season but struck twice in Saturday's 6-1 victory over Staines Town in the first round of the FA Cup.

Palmer has had to wait patiently for the goals to come and intends to build on his brace at Hartlepool United on Sunday afternoon.

The striker said: “You want to score goals and as long as we’re winning that’s the main thing. But as a striker you want to score goals and I’ve had to be patient. But hopefully I’m off the mark now and I can just take that into next week.”

Palmer added: “As a forward that’s what you want to do [get goals]. I’ve been a bit unfortunate of late and I’m glad to get off the mark now and I just want to take that into Hartlepool away.”

Palmer struck twice inside the opening 13 minutes of the tie and acknowledged those goals had been a long time coming – his last came against Stevenage in August.

The 23-year-old said: “It was about time I got a couple of goals. It felt good to get those early on and probably settled the team a little bit. You can take your foot off the gas, and I don’t think we did that too much.”

The win was much needed after a difficult run in the league for the O’s. But as Palmer pointed out, Orient are just a few points off the automatic promotion places.

The former Mansfield Town striker said: “We need to get ourselves back in the top three. We’re only two points off second, which shows how tight this league is.

“Despite the dip of form we’ve had we’re still so close to the top three, which shows the quality in the squad.

“We’ve just got to start picking up a few more wins and we’ll be flying in that top three.”

Orient are playing a day later than usual this weekend after their trip to Hartlepool was selected for live TV coverage. It means the O’s will have extra time to prepare for the clash but Palmer insists it will not affect any of the players.

He said: “As a footballer your life revolves around football so it doesn’t make too much of a difference to us whether it’s a Friday, Saturday or a Sunday. It doesn’t bother us.”