Leyton Orient striker Matt Harrold felt his side "could have taken something out of the game" but admitted that the first half "wasn't good enough" as they lost 4-2 at home to Forest Green Rovers.

Harrold scored Orient's first to start a potential comeback after the visitors had raced into a three-goal lead at the break. Jordan Maguire-Drew then scored to make it 3-2, but Junior Mondal won it late on for Rovers.

It could have been a different story though as, just minutes before Mondal's strike, Josh Coulson crashed an effort off the crossbar for Orient which would have completed a remarkable comeback.

Speaking after the game, Harrold said: "I think people are going home with maybe something in their head where we've shown fight, we've fought to the end, it could have been different, could have taken something out of the game. 

"The first half is not good enough. I think we started the game okay for 10 minutes, I think the crowd got behind us, I thought we were on the front foot and then we concede a goal and we collapsed. I don't know whether it's a psychological thing or we forgot how to win or we forgot how to stay in the game for bad periods, but we've got to find it. We've got to find a way of doing better.

"That's not the defence, that's everyone, one to 11, doing better within our shape, being cleverer, not switching off, being first to balls that drop down. There are no excuses, we have to do better in that first half. You can't walk it at home 3-0 down without them really having to work that hard for the goals. That's something we're not happy about."

Harrold, though, felt that Orient gave a much-improved display in the second period and gained much more credit than they did for the first half.

He said: "We've come out second half and I think we had to show something. We maybe simplified things a bit and done the actual things we were told to do and we're probably walking out with more credit than we did after the first half but we do need to start winning, we need to get something. We need to grind out a point or something just to get us going again.

"We've lost a bit of belief after what's been happening. It seems a long time ago when we won three on the trot. We need to remember what we are, what we're good at, we need to show incredible togetherness because it's very easy when you're winning games. Everyone's patting you on the back and things are easy, you can run more, you can jump higher. When things are tough and you're losing and your character is being questioned, that's the time when you've really got to dig in and show something."