The worst Leyton Orient performance since he took over was how manager Richie Wellens labelled their defeat away to Shrewsbury Town.

Both teams had lost their opening three games in League One this season but it was the Shrews who turned things around with a 3-0 success at New Meadow.

And it left the O's rooted the bottom of the table and Wellens with a lot of questions to ask of his players.

"I think since I’ve been at the club it’s the worst performance overall," he said.

"Credit to Shrewsbury because they dug in, they fought, they played with intensity, they pressed and in the first half we’ve had 75 per cent possession of the ball but no crosses, too slow, too lethargic.

“I warned the players before the game that we’ve been brilliant against Birmingham, Bolton, Charlton and even though we’ve lost, we’ve done a lot of things well.

“And no disrespect to Shrewsbury but this is a game we thought we could win.

"But we’ve come here and completely forgot the basics. Too many straight passes, too slow. We were just really really poor.

"I want to apologise to the supporters because that is not acceptable but also thank them because they clapped the players at the end and they didn’t deserve to be clapped."

It was an emphatic victory from Paul Hurst’s Shrewsbury, a debut goal from on-loan Chelsea midfielder Leo Castledine setting them on their way before a late brace from Thomas Bloxham stuck the knife into Orient.

Castledine saw an early effort blocked before he opened the scoring with his first senior goal in the 22nd minute, latching onto Tommi O’Reilly’s perfectly-weighted through-ball to fire beyond Zach Hemming.

Daniel Agyei came closest to getting the visitors back into the game when he cut in from the right and saw his effort shave the top of the bar and over.

O’Reilly had a shot tipped over before Bloxham doubled the advantage with a fine strike from 25 yards with eight minutes remaining.

And he wrapped it up five minutes into stoppage time as he converted a knock-down in the box from George Lloyd.

Hurst hailed his side’s work ethic as they got their season up and running.

Speaking to Shrewsbury’s official website, he said: "Nothing’s easy and at times throughout the afternoon Orient had a lot of the ball.

"But what we did do well is limit their opportunities and I think they’ve only had one shot on target.

“I thought we worked very hard and were very disciplined and I thought the goals, especially the first two, were very, very good for different reasons and were worthy of winning any game.

"The third right at the end was the icing on top of the cake.”

Hurst was also delighted to see the Shrews record a first clean sheet of the season.

He added: “We spoke about that. It’s been a long time and yes at various points there are reasons why perhaps you’re conceding goals, but you always give yourselves a chance [with a clean sheet].

“We want to try and be harder to play against and I thought we were on the back of the Huddersfield game as well in terms of that was another performance where we looked more solid.

“We’ve got to keep that going because we know the challenges that lie ahead.”