Leyton Orient assistant coach Ross Embleton said it was “hard to look” at times during the side’s 2-0 over Harrogate on Saturday.

Josh Coulson headed the O’s in front after only two minutes against the play-off chasers, but a hard-working Harrogate side made it difficult for the hosts, and on another day they would have taken their chances to take at least a point from the game.

Another header late on though, this time from Matt Harrold, ensured Orient took maximum points going into the final two games of the season.

After the game, Embleton said: “[My nerves] are alright now. If we go back to 15 or 20 minutes ago then they weren’t so good. That last five minutes before the board went up I felt quite good. Once the board goes up we seem to manage games quite well, like we did last week and then today we saw it out quite well but it was hard to look at other times.

“[Josh Coulson} has been a massive threat. In both boxes we know what we’re going to get from Josh as long as the delivery is of a standard, which it was. We had a plan in our mind of how the first couple of set-pieces were going to look in terms of how we could move them around and find an opportunity for someone to get on the end of it.”

After such an ideal start, it would have been expected of Orient to push on and have more clear-cut chances, but try as they might, they were frustrated by a resolute Harrogate team and failed to really trouble James Belshaw in their goal.

Embleton said: “Obviously we’re disappointed. I thought there were moments in the first half. I think the fact that James Brophy got the club Man of the Match showed you that in the first half there were moments where we looked a real threat but I think you have to give credit to Harrogate.

“I think out of possession they’re potentially one of the most hard-working teams, up alongside us I would say in terms of the way they tried to stop us playing and the way they press and you’ve got to give them a little bit of credit in terms of nullifying that threat and stopping us from creating more opportunities.”

While all of the substitutes made an impact on the game in their own way, Embleton reserved particular praise for match-winner Harrold, who has scored some important goals in recent weeks both as a starter and as a substitute, including against AFC Telford United in the FA Trophy and the late equaliser against FC Halifax Town earlier this month.

He said: “Matt deserves incredible credit. Unfortunately for him he was starting to get a bit of a tag about the FA Trophy but they were the games he was getting his opportunities in. I felt devastated for him when he got sent off away at Telford because he’d had a huge impact.

“He’s fantastic when he comes off the bench. He shores us up, he can be an extra marker, he’s a huge threat. We can start to put more and different types of crosses into the box that are going to cause the opposition problems when you’ve got someone like Matt in the box.

“The other thing is without having blistering pace, he gets through an incredible amount of work when he comes on to try to prevent the opposition getting up the pitch.”