Justin Edinburgh’s return to White Hart Lane this week gave the Gills boss a lot to think about, as he admitted when he spoke ahead of this weekend’s visit of Coventry City to Priestfield. 
“We learned a lot on Wednesday night but must push on now – that’s what we put this squad together to do and it won’t be through lack of hard work, effort and determination on our behalf,” he said. “We’ve got to now put complete performances together – we had some good periods; we’ve had some bad one but we now have to start doing it for whole games and getting back to the levels of consistency that we showed for most of last season, and when we do that we’ll be looking up rather than anyone else.”
“The players owe me nothing after Wednesday – I believe that there’s a lot of disappointment within the group, but they have to understand the level of the opposition that they faced. I think a lot of them will think that they should have done better but having said that you must remember who we were playing and where we were playing. For whatever reason, I don’t think that we really did ourselves justice. Its my job as manager of the club to accept responsibility for the performance – that’s not a worry for me – I do though feel for the players as I know that they wanted to perform on that stage! Football is a tough game, a tough industry, and some of the players may not get the opportunity to play on a stage like that again. They was disappointment in that dressing and probably still is as they may not play at a Premiership stadium ever again – they gave everything they had but I’m sure that they would have wanted to perform better than they did – they ran more than they have in other games simply because of the quality they were up against and the possession that Spurs had.”
Gills return to League action this weekend as they welcome a City side to Kent who find themselves bottom of League One – not that Edinburgh is taking the Sky Blues likely. “People have asked me is there’s “an ideal time to play a side bottom of the League?” If you think that then the inevitable happens! They’re bottom of the League and yes people will say that we should beat them but it’s never that easy! We’re at home and we want to be winning football matches at Priestfield but I won’t sit here and say that it’s an ideal opposition to play because no matter who or when you know that the bottom side will win a game that’s for sure. Our mind set is that three points is what we need here on Saturday.”
“Neither of us ended last season as we would have liked and neither have made the flying start that everyone wanted at the start of this. I think that in terms of club resources and stature, Coventry are well below where they expect to be – do I think we are? No, but against the targets we set ourselves we are! So in terms of what we achieve for what we pay we’re probably well above where we should be.”
The Gills boss then admitted that his side’s level of consistency has been disappointing this far. He said, “The best way to get the missing consistency is confidence, and confidence comes from winning football matches. And then there’s fortune – the bounce of the ball, and then you’ve got to make your own luck too! We’ve got to start being better at seeing games out. We’ve come from behind and that’s not been a problem – we retrieved points in games where we’ve had zero on the board, but we haven’t accumulated enough points from being in the lead of games and that’s what we’ve got to be better at doing – showing the resilience that we know we need. Our job is to make sure that that happens and it will. It’s been time since we played and won at home against Bury, so that’s not where we want to be. That’s not what we or the fans want, so there’s a record that needs to be broken and lets hope that we go and do it on Saturday.”