Whether Steve Evans is still Gillingham manager in the coming days and weeks remains very much in doubt despite the club issuing a statement on Thursday.

The Gills boss was as bullish as ever at Thursday morning’s press conference, just hours before the club issued a statement informing fans that Gillingham had turned down an official approach from Stevenage to take over as their manager.

With the two clubs clearly unable to agree a fee for Evans’ services, a manager that still is contracted with the Kent club until the end of June 2022, many would think that matter has now been put to bed, but these things rarely end there.

Evans has made no secret of his desire to win football matches at this stage of his managerial career and fractures with chairman Paul Scally have started to show in recent weeks, but the manager admits the two are still communicating. He said at Thursday morning’s press conference:

“I’ve not spoken to the Chairman for a few days which is not normal if you like, the Chairman gets on with running the other sides of the business, but he did let me know in an email yesterday (Wednesday) that he turned that request down to Stevenage.”

“That’s within his rights and duties of this football club to do that. I’m meeting with chairman later today (Thursday), not just to discuss that, he may take that further and discuss that with me, he may not, that’s his prerogative.”

“Everyone knows and it’s a matter of public record that my contract is up at the end of the season. I’ve had couple of chats with the chairman about that in the past few weeks and the chairman as a man, if you call it Steve and Paul, if you call it Paul Scally and Steve Evans, the chairman knows where I want to go in the summer.”

“The chairman is aware of my thoughts and if the chairman wants to elaborate on that, then he can, it’s a private contractual matter between Steve Evans and Gillingham Football Club and of course that’s Paul Scally as he owns the Football Club.”

“We have open dialogue, we talk and we share thoughts. I’ve said before we can have a row, we can make up, we can do all the things that are harmonious and I remember working for Tony Stewart (at Rotherham United), it won’t be the first time as I had a row with the chairman up there.”

“It wouldn’t be a row, it would be a disagreement, a different opinion, but we’ve got to be as one to get something from Crewe on Saturday.”

“The one thing we are going to try and do collectively is win on Saturday and win some points going forward.”

Looking forward, Evans is gaining plenty of sympathy from Gillingham fans for dealing with such an injury crisis ahead of Saturday’s League One clash at Crewe.

With one eye on the January transfer window for Gillingham fans, Evans admits ideas have been exchanged at Priestfield:

“I think the chairman wants to understand where the club is as a business, what we can do, what we can’t do, we have a number of options open to us in the loan market, whether we keep players, whether we don’t, there’s not a loan player here that we have to keep as they are all up for negotiation in January, although the paperwork does say they can go through until the end of the season.”

“It’s difficult to have conversations when you’ve got nine or ten injured.”

Whether Steve Evans is still Gillingham manager come January currently seems incredibly unlikely.

With the club struggling for injuries, lacking investment and a chairman under fire from large sections of the Gillingham support, Evans may feel the time has come to leave and look at other options. Stevenage Football Club is clearly an option at this time.

Should Evans leave, Gillingham fans will be wondering who’s the next man (or woman) in the frame for the job.

Neil Smith did a decent job at Bromley before being replaced by Andy Woodman, but don’t bet against a third spell in charge for Dover Athletic manager Andy Hessenthaler….