Sean Clohessy believes the players and not the manager have to take the blame after the O’s fading hopes of a place in the play-offs suffered another setback following Tuesday night’s 3-1 home defeat to a classy Plymouth side who are chasing automatic promotion.

The defeat has left Orient needing snookers in their bid to reach the League Two play-offs. They now sit five points adrift of Wimbledon, who occupy the final play-off place and whom they visit on Saturday, with just three games left to play.

But Clohessy said: “It’s not over until it’s over. We have to go there and it has to be a win. We have to take points off them.

"We have to get three points and make sure we win the rest of the games. It’s down to us. We put ourselves in this position and we’ve got to deal with it.”

He was speaking after the midweek defeat where Plymouth opened up a 2-0 lead after Orient failed to defend two free kicks, before the O's pulled one back from the penalty spot, only for the impressive visitors to score again in injury time.

He said: “We are not happy with the way we conceded the goals and it’s tough. The dressing room is distraught and people’s heads are down but we’ve got to move on and put it right on Saturday.

“It’s been two set pieces that unlocked us. You can’t let that happen. It’s just too easy.

“The goal before half-time killed us. We let ourselves down and it was an uphill challenge from then.

“All the boys are disappointed. It’s not just individual errors, it’s as a unit. We’ve worked on it the whole season and there’s still mistakes being made.”

The defender called on the fans to stay with the team. Clohessy accepts the side have underachieved this season but insists it is vital the supporters remain behind the players.

He said: “I don’t think the fans understand how big they are. We know we haven’t done well enough this year for Ian Hendon, for Kevin Nolan or Hessy [Hessenthaler]. We haven’t got the results we should have.

"With the players we’ve got we should be at the top of this league or around it and we haven’t done that and that’s only our own fault so we need the fans. We need three wins and you never know what’s going to happen.”