As much as winning the game, Ross Embleton was delighted that Leyton Orient secured a clean sheet in their 1-0 win over Northampton Town yesterday.

That was the first game in which Orient hadn’t conceded a goal in the league since August 17, the goalless draw with Stevenage.

While Embleton acknowledged that there haven’t been enough clean sheets so far this season, he praised the defence for their performance against the Cobblers.

After the game, he said: “Towards the end there, obviously you want to hold on and get over the line to get the three points but at the same time even when it was 0-0 before we scored I was thinking wouldn’t it be lovely to come off today with a clean sheet.

“We haven’t done it enough this year, whether you put it down to luck or poor performance at times, we haven’t kept enough clean sheets, we haven’t stayed in the game long enough and we gave ourselves the best chance to do that today and got the points.”

It was a game far more deserving of just the single goal, with Northampton hitting the post in the second half and being denied by a terrific Dean Brill save late on, while Orient themselves struck the woodwork in both the opening two minutes and late in the first half.

Chance creation, though, as opposed to finishing, has rarely been a problem for the O’s this season, and Embleton was happy with the opportunities that they managed to make for themselves.

He said: “I thought we created a couple of good chances in the first half. [James] Brophy down the side, albeit without that real sort of end product, Conor [Wilkinson] went through one-on-one and scuffed a chance. I think we had one or two real good opportunities in front of their goal.

“I think we rode our luck with that one. I think it was [Harry] Smith that brought it down under pressure, set it back and the boy hits the post. I think there’s been occasions this year where we’ve lost out on points or we’ve gone a goal behind or things have not gone in our favour so whether you put it down to luck or good performance, it swung in our favour today and we’ve seen that moment through.”

The game’s decisive goal came on 56 minutes when a wonderful pass from Matt Harrold released Brophy down the left, who bore down on goal before firing past David Cornell, and Embleton praised both parts of the goal.

He said: “Matt gave us a hell of a lot last week when he came on and I thought he fully deserved his chance today. If I’m being brutally honest, me and him have had a conversation this season and I said to him there’s probably been times where I should have put him on and when I look back, obviously hindsight being a wonderful thing, and I haven’t done, sometimes I’ve regretted it, so I thought he fully deserved his starting place in the team and he gave us a lot throughout the game until he came off. It was a fantastic take and then a great pass.

“I just said to him [Brophy] for him to lift it over the goalkeeper in the manner that he did at that speed requires incredible talent. He said he felt like he was coming to the end and he might end up toppling over. He felt the goalie was going to go one way and might leave his near post so thankfully he did.”

Next up for Orient is a return to Leasing.com Trophy action as they travel to AFC Wimbledon on Tuesday night, and the boss says that he will continue to give opportunities to the younger players and fringe players in the competition.

He said: “I enjoy the competition because it’s a competition where I feel we can give people a real good opportunity to play their way into the team. The evidence of that was when we played Southend – Gormo [Dale Gorman] and George Marsh got into the team pretty quickly after that and I maintain that that’s always going to be the case.

“There will certainly be changes to the team on Tuesday night to give people opportunities, to give people minutes on the pitch, and we’ll go out there and look to win again.”