Leyton Orient interim manager Jobi McAnuff feels his side are still not at the same level as some of the top sides in the division after suffering a 4-2 defeat to leaders Cambridge United.

A brace from Joe Ironside and goals from Paul Mullin and Shilow Tracey sealed the three points for the U’s and left the O’s four points off the play-off places.

The boss felt they played well at stages but overall conceding poor goals proved costly for Orient with just three games left.

“Yes and no, they’re a good side, I think from my point of view they’re a team that I've got a lot of admiration for in the way they go about their business,” McAnuff said.

“They play with a real intensity and togetherness, they work very hard, and the two boys up top are a real handful and they put themselves about.

“I spoke about the difference of the top end of that table again when we went to Cheltenham and at the minute for us we’re just not quite at that level that those top teams are.

“Having said that I thought we went toe to toe with them particularly in the first-half, it was positive, we started well but conceded which was disappointing but we came back into it.

“We were worthy to go in level at half-time then second-half just poor goals and that’s the disappointment from my point of view as it’s not anything magical that they’ve come up with.

“It really was us shooting ourselves in the foot and against the better teams you just can not get away with making the mistakes and errors that we did.”

One of Cambridge’s goals came through a penalty while the O’s were denied a spot kick late on but the boss refused to blame the referee for their defeat.

“There was a lot of tussling for most of the night, I thought their centre forward was quite robust to say the least, we didn’t get a lot off him.

“I’m not going to sit here and focus too much on his (referee) performance, that’s not why we lost the game, it was an unhelpful performance from our point of view from the referee.

“That’s not why we lost so I'll focus on what we can effect, go back through, and pick out the bits that weren’t good enough.”