Gillingham head to Crewe Alexandra this weekend still top of League Two despite Tuesday’s disappointing defeat to Grimsby Town at MEMS Priestfield, and boss Mark Bonner is under no illusions just how difficult the trip to Gresty Road will be.

Speaking KSN at this week’s briefing, when asked just how important a bounce back at Gresty Road would be at the weekend, the Gills boss told us, “The key for successful teams is if you win games you want to go on winning them and go on unbeaten runs and make them last as long as possible, and if you lose games you want to go on runs of losses or not winning games making them as short as possible.

“So, the quicker the response to a bad result the better and that does wonders, the “crisis” that forms in the world of football these days from one defeat can be big, from two can be bigger and with three the worlds ending.

“You really are only ever two or three games from a crisis and the less of them you have in a season, the better! The strength you can build as a team and to have a positive result after a negative one is very good as you then never get too down hearted by a defeat because you can back yourself to win the next game which is what we back ourselves to do!” 

“The couple of weeks has been busy with five games in fifteen days. I do think when you look at the schedule that there won’t be many games lost to international duties therefore there should not be many changes to fixtures because of that.

“FA Cup replays are gone this year, that won’t tie up any Tuesdays; we are out of the other two so that is out of Tuesdays, so the only thing left to influence the fixtures is bad weather. There will be some of that but if you look through our season now, I really don’t see crazy schedules with a crazy number of Tuesday games which we will love as the players will be fresher going into games and you can practice and work on what we want to improve and that will really help us.

“Any blank weeks are good, these weeks where you play a lot of games are tough, you have to find a way. Just look at Grimsby, they got six points away to Carlisle and then away to Gillingham up and down the country in four days – it’s an amazing return; we have to do something similar later in the season where we have long Saturday and Tuesday away long ones, and I tell you know, we will be dancing off the ceiling if we get six points from that!

“So, that is what we must try to do ourselves. Thankfully, there are not that many periods like the one that we have just been through, we have to do that perhaps four or five times in the year but that makes the times we get to improve, and practice will be really beneficial to us.” 

Summing up his team news, Bonner said that Remeao Hutton will be assessed after missing Tuesday, before travelling as the squad will not be confirmed until just before departure.

“Conor Masterson and Aaron Rowe are both “not ready” whilst there were no new injuries picked up on Tuesday night. Bonner also mentioned that Josh Andrews he hopes will be back in full training next week but like Rowe and Masterson still needs a couple of weeks before being considered.

Bonner finished by saying, “We have a good squad available and do not need to force things too early in the season, we should not because that would hurt us land after a spell there would be a lot of players unavailable for a spell.”