Gillingham manager Martin Allen felt their were positives to be taken from his sides’ 3-0 defeat to Watford on Tuesday night.

In their final pre-season game of the summer, Gillingham fielded a much changed side for the visit of the Hornets to Priestfield and it was three first half goals that settled the game.

Speaking after the full-time whistle, Allen said he was pleased with the performance of the side despite it being his first loss as Gills manager:

“I thought in the first half we were nowhere near where we have been. I thought in the second half we were superb and there were some players tonight who have come out with a great deal of credit.

“They have really pushed themselves forward; you have to remember we had a good team performance on Saturday so some of these other players were looking to push in to that.

“Some have set themselves right up for it which is great news – at half time I asked them for a bit more tenacity, a bit more self-belief, to be a bit more competitive, a bit more tigerish in the tackle and a little bit more courage because I thought in the first half they were better than us, which is fine.

“I still want to compete and I don’t think we fully competed with them in the first half so all credit to the players for a great second half.

“We said try and get a result and to be fair to them they dug in and I thought 0-0 in the second half was probably unfair because we had a good few chances to score goals ourselves so it was a good night.”

The Gills will now spend the rest of this week preparing for the new season which starts in less than a week’s time as they visit Bristol City in the Capital One Cup on Tuesday 14th August.