Leyton Orient youth team manager Danny Webb is pleased with the experience his players gained from their FA Youth Cup victory against Tower Hamlets.

Goals from Charles Clayden, substitute Eric Lopes and Ruel Sotiriou helped the O’s progress into the third qualifying round and seal them a 3-0 victory at Mile End Stadium last night.

Webb said: “I’m very pleased, everything we try to do is about developing and preparing the young lads for being professional footballers, hopefully at Orient and even though this is a cup competition and you want to get as far as you can, my remit still is to give them learning experiences and that was one.

“They’ve come somewhere with a non academy playing surface as well as a rough and tumble environment against a really strong physical team who played some good stuff.”

The former first-team manager admits the first-half was below par, but is pleased with how his players dug deep and took everything on board.

“After a shaky first-half, got the first goal, second-half the young lads could have let off but it shows the strong from the weak and what pleased me was everyone was strong.

“I made a change at half-time to change the shape and it seemed to work and the players really kicked on.

“I thought the back four and the goalie was excellent, we’ve done a lot of work recently on them trying to be non-league centre halves and full back for the moment as that’s the league the first-team is in and I want to get them into that.”

The 34-year-old also believes it’s important for the youngsters to never let off if they want to break into the first-team.

“I think a few of them older youth team players may be closer to the squad than what they think and they’ve got to make sure in these games they don’t let their standards drop and at half-time I said I think a few of them had their foot off the gas a little bit and second-half they came out and looked like a professional team.

“That’s no disrespect to Tower Hamlets as I thought they were strong and they’ve got a lot of players who have been in professional clubs ranks.

“Overall, very pleased with the result, the manager and director of football were here and hopefully they were impressed by some individual performances.”