Gillingham head to stadium.mk this weekend to face the current League Two form team MK Dons with boss Mark Bonner acknowledging the task ahead for his side. 

The Gills travel on the back of the much-needed triumph over Salford City last weekend, with the manager admitting to KSN this week that what pleased him most was, “The win! We knew that we had to win the game really, so that was the fundamental thing.” Bonner told us. 

“And then the bits that contributed towards it; the work ethic and the attitude was good, but as I said after the game, sometimes you like those moments and you are happy with them, but your over-riding emotion is that you don’t see it more often. The result was the biggest thing as it buys everyone a bit of time and consistency to clear their head and try to back it up this week!” 

“We are at the stage where we want to win games full stop! To just win 1-0 is not really a thought process, we want to win games full-stop and win games playing the way that we want to and building the team that we want to be, and be a lot more aggressive, attacking, confident and free scoring, but we are not there at the moment and we have a long way to go to get there.” 

“Winning games, getting draws sometimes as we have hardly drawn any games is really important to keep adding to the points total, last Saturday’s result was massive for us.” 

“I think this time of year you start to get the number of games that we face in a short period of time, the conditions you face, the pitches start to turn and in a lot of cases that could make it a scruffy watch, but the best teams will stand up and grind out results and that is what we have to do over this coming period.” 

Facing Bonner in the home dug-out will be former Chatham Town boss Scott Lindsey who many thought was the man for the Priestfield managers job before Bonner was appointed after leading Crawley Town to play-off success last season. 

Looking to the weekend, Bonner said, “MK are synonymous with a style so that whoever is in charge, they look similar. There are differences of course in every manager but if you could pair a manager with a team. Scott has gone in and the run of form since his arrival has been excellent as they are the form team. I do honestly think that anyone who finishes above them will get promoted because I think they will be right at the top of it and will strengthen in the window, getting better and stronger as they go.

“They are certainly one of the favourites and one of the strongest teams I think; one, because of the identity that they have, which is really paired nicely with the manager.

“He hasn’t probably got all of the squad that he would want, and two, they are in good form scoring lots of goals, I was at their recent game with Chesterfield what a midweek game that was!

“To be fair it was a really interesting game to go to for the first 25 minutes when MK were 2-0 up and Chesterfield had a man sent off and then it became a game that was a little unrealistic to watch as a game to learn too much from.

“They are a possession-based team who have direct threats, have good runners in the team and there is a lot to admire about their team, lots to be mindful of in our game against them but also there’s the thought that if we play well, we can cause them problems too. So, it will be an interesting challenge.” 

“The game will look very different from the game last weekend which is just the nature of it. We have one or two games that we have played this year that we can draw on for similar experiences.” 

“It’s not the most intimidating in terms of atmospheres but whereas other grounds give you that challenge, this one doesn’t but you play against a team who can hurt you in so many different ways and have real threats in their game.

“That’s what makes it a tough challenge and when you add to that the form that they are in, makes it a tough one but we have been buoyed by last weekend’s result and hopefully, that is something we can build on.” 

In terms of team news Bonner told us that keeper Jake Turner may be involved but is still training in a protective mask following his broken nose at Bromley, whilst Joe Gbode is definitely missing due to ongoing concussion protocols but will be in contention for the Cheltenham home game on December 20. 

Elsewhere, there was still no news on Oli Hawkins’ return, whilst both Tim Dieng and Armani Little could both be back training next week with Dieng the most likely to be included against Cheltenham. It was also confirmed that young defender Sam Gale has returned to Priestfield from his loan spell at Chelmsford City.