Ross Embleton says he takes “full responsibility” for Leyton Orient’s first half performance after they suffered a 3-1 defeat at home to Swindon Town.

Goals from Keshi Anderson and Jerry Yates sandwiched an unfortunate Joe Widdowson own goal in the first half to virtually put the Robins out of sight by the break. Jordan Maguire-Drew’s effort with 15 minutes ago was, unfortunately, not enough to spark an unlikely comeback.

Embleton changed the formation from Tuesday night’s Leasing.com Trophy win over Southend United, and he admitted than in hindsight it wasn’t the correct decision to do so.

Speaking after the game, he said: “It was something that, I’ll be brutally honest, I feel I didn’t get particularly right today. I felt like the way in which I set us up was going to be able to counteract some of the movements that we knew were going to come into play from them today but that didn’t work out so I take full responsibility for the way that the first half panned out.

“We knew that at times we were going to be without the ball because they were very comfortably but I thought that we allowed that to happen on a few occasions in the first half.”

While Swindon did dominate the possession statistic in the first half, their number of clear-cut chances was limited. However, Embleton bemoaned the fact that, once again, the side conceded regularly from the limited opportunities the opposition had.

He said: “I think that’s [chances to goals ratio] probably something that has happened a lot this year. I don’t know exactly how it looked but I think if I were to analyse the amount of opportunities people had had or created against us, there hasn’t been a great deal, but I suppose you can look at it in two different ways.

“One is that we’re not giving away too many chances but when people get them they’re either taking them or we’re allowing them chances that are too easy to score from. It’s obviously a concern.

“I haven’t watched them [the goals] back yet but the first one looked to me like a cross-shot. I thought we defended our box quite resolutely to be honest. They had a number of corners when we kicked off and I never really felt under a great deal of pressure. If anything, we had the couple of opportunities where we broke away and had the first shots in the game.”

The next proposition for the O’s is another tough game as they travel down to Exeter City next weekend, another of the early front-runners in League Two, and Embleton is expecting as difficult a game as they were handed against Swindon upon their arrival at St James’ Park.

He said: “I said in there to them that tonight and then the next two are tough, they’re teams at the top of the league. My pre-match team talk, obviously didn’t work, but these are the occasions where there’s 1400 away fans and the place is rocking that you should have wanted to be playing in.

“When you look back to that blue kit we had to wear sitting on the sideline last year and what we had to put up with and some of the stadiums we had to go to, the reason we did it and we were successful was to get on platforms like today where we can go and compete.”