On the eve of another SKYBet English Football League Division One season, Gills boss Justin Edinburgh has been sharing his thought’s with the counties media as his side prepared to make the short trip to Southend United this weekend.
The Gills boss started by speaking about the players who won’t be involved in the big kick off at Roots Hall, saying “Our thoughts are with our players who have had serious injuries in pre-season, but I think it will make myself and the players stronger together and more determined. Obviously it’s been tough –there have been some major injuries in that time that really we couldn’t do anything about. Lee Martin; a non-contact injury where he “just” got his studs stuck in the ground and now looking like we’re going to be missing him for nine months. Lee had an operation earlier in the week and sadly it’s worse than we originally feared, and it is disappointing for the group. Missing a season taken out of your career is so disheartening as being a former player myself, I know how disheartening that is – it’s taken out of your hands and is tough to take!”
“Aaron Morris is the same, just a twist in first day of training – again his knee went and he’s seeing a consultant next week and it’s not looking promising. Bradley Garmiston; in the first pre-season game (as it’s coming to an end) as he got caught. A tackle that Bradley made – not one that was made on him has dislocated his knee-cap; Scott Wagstaff’s not so serious – we’re more positive with that one as we hope it’ll “just” be a short term one. But it really has been difficult to take but we have to move on; we have to be focused going to Southend ready to start the season and I’m sure we are. This groups better equipped than we were twelve months ago, and I feel that on paper this is a better group that it was last year but we have to now prove that when we go out on the field and show everyone that that is the case! We know the players that we’ve got going into the start of the season and we’ve had a good week on the training ground ready for the Southend game. Its been tough as those who have got injured are close team mates of this group and so it’s been felt all through but we have to refocus and stay together and ready for what comes ahead!”
Edinburgh then spoke of his hopes about bringing new blood to Priestfield, which he did today with the loan signing of Jay Emmanuel-Thomas. “We want to do it any day really – the window doesn’t shut tomorrow, we’ve got until the end of August. We’ve got to be careful in our planning. What the injuries have done however has made it a necessity to strengthen the group. When we do that, we’ll be sure that they are the right players who come in and make us stronger. Anyone we enquire about better be aware of the injury “curse” that’s spreading but seriously we’ve had a good week and all being well the players that are fit now will be part of things come 3:00pm Saturday.”
One man seemingly on his way out of the club is striker Luke Norris. “Luke’s spoken to some club’s and I’d expect something to happen,” the boss admitted. “I can’t put a time frame on that except that it has to happen before the end of the month. I think that Luke’s aware of that – we are – and I’ll be surprised if something doesn’t happen in the next week or two. We need something different – Luke, Rory, Cody, Joe and are similar in ways but we want to brighten things up a little bit to make sure we’ve got the varied options. Luke probably won’t be involved in Saturday’s squad.”
The manager then revealed the frustration he’s endured over the summer as his side missed out on the Play Off last season. “It hurt me as it hurt everyone at the football club, but those things happen in football,” he said. “It’s not a case of that we were entitled to make the Play-Offs – we strove for so long to over achieve (and I really do believe that we did over achieve last season). No one with the finance that we had would have got anywhere near where we did last year and so yes we’re proud of what we did. Yes we came up short in the end, but there’s a determination in the group so that if we can get to that position next time around it doesn’t happen again. Every true fan will have been proud of what the team achieved last season. The last two or three previous campaigns in League One had seen changes in manager during the season because of one reason – flirting with relegation. This will be my third season here – when I arrived I think we were 19th and finished 12th. Last season it was ninth and never out of the top ten. And I do genuinely believe that for a club like ours, that’s a massive achievement.”
“Pre-season in a necessity, but this is where we look to do our work and this is where we come alive and Saturday is the one that we all look forward to. I think that we’re a better squad on paper but that means nothing. What matters is after the next 46 League games – its going to be tough as we can only better last season by eight positions and we need to finish higher than that to continue the progression of the football club. It’s going to be a tough challenge, but we as a group like challenges and that’s what we’re going to strive to do! We want to emulate what we did last year and go one better.”