Scott Cuthbert claimed Crawley Town were hungrier than the O’s after their crucial victory at the bottom of League One.

Orient remain in the relegation zone after falling to a 1-0 defeat on Saturday and Cuthbert believes the hosts’ determination to hold onto the lead proved the difference.

The defender said: “They were hungrier than us. We gave them something to hold on to and they did that very well. We gave away a sloppy penalty and they went 1-0 up. The game’s a lot easier when you have something to hold on to.”

Orient’s season to forget has seen them go from beaten play-off finalists to scrapping to stay in the division. But the 27-year-old is adamant defeats such as the one to Crawley will not weaken the belief in the squad they can get out of the bottom four.

“It’s devastating to go from last season challenging for an automatic position to this season,” he conceded. “It’s gutting to be honest but we’ve got to stick together. We’ve got enough quality in this squad to get through it. We’ve got so much talent that has played at a high level as well and so much experience so we’ve got to stay positive. We’ll remain positive right to the end and keep fighting.

“It won’t affect our belief. Obviously we’re upset and low just now but that’s natural after such a big game. But we’ll dust ourselves down, watch the tape, and fully focus on the next match.

“At the end of the day, we’ve got 27 points to play for. There’s a lot of points and if we can get a little run going we can get out of trouble. We’re only three points off it so it’s still not a big ask.”

The O’s had high hopes of claiming a win to climb out of the relegation zone but things did not go to plan and Cuthbert admitted it was hard to take.

He mused: “It was a massive result in terms of the league position and the standings. It’s massively gutting to come away from here and not have at least a point.

“We’re very low. We looked at the league table before the game and thought if we could come here and get three points we could end up sitting 19th at the end the day. Now you look at the table and Crawley are 19th so it’s a gutter. But we’ve got nine games to go and we’ve got to stay focused. We have to take the next game against Port Vale as it comes. It’s another massive game and hopefully we can get three points.”

The O’s failed to score for the third time in four games but Cuthbert insisted the strikers were not to blame for the defeat.

The defender commented: “It would be easy for the defenders to sit here and blame the strikers but there have been plenty of times this season where we’ve conceded sloppy goals and the strikers have got us out of trouble. We’ve all got our jobs to do as a team. There’s no point singling out individuals in different positions. At the end of the day, we’re all in this together and we have to pull together to get ourselves out of this.”

One of the most surprising sights of Saturday’s game was Cuthbert moving forward into a target man role up front for the final stages of the game.

He said: “The manager just gave me a shout with ten minutes to go just to go up and try to win some balls and flick on in the air. We weren’t doing much defending in the second half the way they were playing so I was just doing as I was told.”