Leyton Orient’s Ross Embleton has praised young centre-back Marvin Ekpiteta’s ‘warrior type attitude’ after his strong display against Ebbsfleet United on Tuesday night.

The centre-back replaced George Elokobi early on against the Kent side after the Cameroon defender limped off with a hamstring injury and impressed with his dominant display at the back.

Ekpiteta joined Orient from East Thurrock United in January and enjoyed an extended run in the O’s starting line-up towards the end of last season.

The 22-year-old has since benefited from a full pre-season with the club and was close to featuring against Salford, but now looks almost certain to start today’s game against Barrow due to Elokobi’s injury.

Assistant coach Embleton has been thoroughly impressed with Ekpiteta’s attitude since he moved to East London earlier this year and was full of praise for the centre-back after Tuesday’s game against Ebbsfleet.

Speaking after the final whistle, Embleton said: “He (Ekpiteta) has come in and absolutely hit the ground running. His attitude and all the things that go with being a professional footballer are absolutely spot on and Marvin gives himself the best opportunity to be the very best player that he can be.

“He’s competitive and has that warrior type attitude to go and defend his box and do the real competitive and ugly side of the game really well. He’s come back in fantastic shape.

“Towards the back end of last season, albeit when we signed him, we were going to loan him back to East Thurrock but because of injuries we called him back quite quickly and I think that gave Marvin a chance to settle into the club really well and give him the opportunity to build and fight for a starting spot in the team.”

Elokobi’s injury now gives some of the O’s fringe players a chance to force their way into head coach Justin Edinburgh’s match-day squad.

Last year’s Young Player-of-the-Season Dan Happe has yet to feature in Orient’s match-day 16 yet, as well as versatile defender Myles Judd and experienced striker David Mooney.

Embleton believes it is important to keep each member of the squad motivated and admitted the O’s may look to make changes to the starting line-up in the coming weeks due to the congested start to the National League season.

He said: “If George is to struggle over the next few days, then you get a ripple effect and Dan Happe will all of a sudden find himself in the squad when he’s in the stand tonight. It would be the same with all the little niggles and injuries that we pick up.

“It’s important that we have that opportunity to rotate players because we have some players in the team that can’t keep doing Saturday-Tuesday, Saturday-Tuesday. It’s vitally important that we use the squad well.

“We don’t want to get too desperate and make rash changes too quickly. We want to keep everybody on board and working in the right direction.”