Gillingham go into the Christmas period with just a solitary defeat in their previous nine games and have now won six home games in succession.

After this latest comfortable three points at Fortress Priestfield leaves MK Dons firmly marooned in the Division’s bottom three.

For Steve Evans and the home side, this was the perfect start to the Festive period and after half an hour of probing, goals from the front two – Mikael Mandron and Brandon Hanlon – either side of the half hour mark gave the home side the advantage.

Before Alex Gilbey breached the Gills rear guard  at Priestfield for the fist time in 505 minutes.  In the past few seasons, this surely would have produced panic for the home faithful, but there’s something different about this side and so it proved to be as just over four minutes later, skipper Max Ehmer was on hand to blast home after Olly Lee’s free kick had been saved.

For the visitors though, a bleak mid-winter is looming as they slipped to defeat again to extend their miserable run to just one solitary win in fourteen games!

Such is the form of the Gills at home base, teams are beginning to park their respective buses across Priestfield, and the Dons were no different and two banks of yellow were soon in place. 

The Gills though were patient and despite the early stages of this lunchtime kick off being played in heavy drizzle, the home side controlled the game – probing and searching for the breakthrough in the opening thirty minutes.  The closest they came was when Alfie Jones’ shot from Hanlon’s centre was beaten out by Dons keeper Lee Nicholls from an uncontested drop-ball.

The games opening goal duly arrived on the half hour and owed a lot to the brilliance of Lee.  The midfielder won the ball on the edge of the box and then played a simply magnificent chipped ball back across the box for Mandron to loop a header wide of Nicholls for his fourth goal of an increasingly blossoming season. 

Then enter flying from the right-hand side, Mandron’s strike partner Hanlon, and his sixth goal of the season was soon crashed in at the near post with this time the Dons keeper beaten by pure power rather than Mandron’s earlier “precision”!

The visitors made two changes at the break and within nine minutes were back in the game as Alex Gilbey magnificently cut in off the left wing before slamming the ball past Jack Tucker and into the Gills net. 

It was the first goal that Gillingham had conceded at Priestfield in over 500 minutes of football and the first since Rotherham’s late third in their drubbing of Gillingham at the end of October – nearly fifty days ago.

It needed a reply and it got one less than five minutes later.  O’Connor and Lee worked a sharp free kick routine that resulted in Lee’s low drive being beaten out by Nicholls only for Ehmer to smash home his first goal in over a year!

And that was effectively that – the Gills could and if Evans is ultra-critical the boss will admit that his charges should have won by more. An untimely uneven bounce denied Hanlon a strike on goal after he chased a huge Bonham clearance; Mandron and Connor Ogilvie then combined brilliantly down the left, with Ogilvie then flashing an effort across the face of goal.

Before Ogilvie fed Hanlon through only for the striker to be held up literally by Dons’ defenders – if only Hanlon not been so “honest”, the home side would surely have been given a spot kick!

But what the home side had already done on this particular Saturday lunchtime was more than enough to seal three more points and send the Gills into the top half of the League One table and heading to Portman Road on Boxing Day just five points from the promised land of the Play Off places.

GILLINGHAM – Bonham, Fuller, Ehmer, Tucker, Ogilvie, O’Keefe,) Jones, O’Connor (Marshall 88), Lee (Charles-Cook 80), Hanlon (Jakubiak 91), Mandron

Subs – Walsh, Hodson, Ndjoli, Pringle

MK DONS – Nicholls, Lewington, Walsh, Poole, Gilbey, Agard (Nombe HT), McGrandles (Reeves 75), Mason, Houghton, Brittain, Boateng (Bowery HT)

Subs – Williams, Dickenson, Moore, Kasumu

REFEREE – Nicholas Kinseley

ASSISTANTS – Michael Webb & Mike Desborough

FOURTH OFFICIAL – Andrew Aylott