Cambridge United head coach Neil Harris provides honest assessment of his side’s performance during Sky Bet League One loss to Leyton Orient

Head coach Neil Harris pulled no punches in his assessment of Cambridge United’s 2-0 home defeat to Leyton Orient this afternoon.

After his first four games in charge of the U’s returned a healthy seven points, the U’s delivered a poor performance in front of a packed Abbey Stadium on New Year’s Day.

And while Harris wanted to remind everyone of the good that the players have produced during his short tenure, he also insisted that he would not accept more sub-standard displays.

“Frustrated, disappointed, angry – all those emotions after losing a game at home,” he said.

“I’ve told the players what I thought, left them in no uncertain terms, (but) what I would like to point out to everybody is that in my first four games in charge we’ve been outstanding.

“We’ve got seven points against three of the four top 10 sides (and) deserved at least a point at Oxford, if not more, so it could have been eight or 10 points.

“Tonight we took a step backwards. The level of performance, individually and collectively, was nowhere near what we produced in the first four games. I need to review the game and have a look why.

“Losing George Thomas (to injury) at the start of the second half had a huge impact on us as a team, structurally but also competitively.

“My biggest disappointment was a lack of character and strength in performance. I’m not used to my teams being out-competed at times. I don’t like it, I won’t accept it and I certainly won’t accept it here at the Abbey.

“At times we looked a little bit vulnerable, which I’ve seen in games I watched earlier in the season. We need to eradicate that quickly, but I’m not going to bemoan the group too much because the first month they’ve been really impressive.”

While Orient were much the better side across the 90 minutes and deserving winners, both of their goals were gifted to them.

Jubril Okedina was heavily involved on each occasion, while goalkeeper Jacks Stevens is likely to have been disappointed after he was beaten by Daniel Agyei, which made the scoreline 2-0.

Harris added: “We give two really poor goals away, really poor goals. They’re really soft goals and they’re not acceptable.

“I don’t want to talk about individual mistakes but all I’ve said to the group is that individually and collectively we have to be strong.

“I spoke to the Under-21 lads and Under-18 lads (recently) about when they’re training with the first team, you can’t make repetitive mistakes. If you make a mistake it’s acceptable, that’s absolutely fine. We all make mistakes but don’t follow it up with a second and third mistake and I thought we did that tonight for the first 10 minutes of the second half.

“We made mistake after mistake, with and without the ball, and that was more so individuals than collectively. It’s something that individually we have to eradicate quickly.”