Gillingham boss Steve Evans is still hoping to add to his squad before the Friday evening closing of the domestic deadline.
He has also reaffirmed his support of Chairman Paul Scally as EFL Chairmen up and down the country discuss what financial help they need and are going to receive hopefully sooner rather than later, as well as looking ahead to the weekend’s trip to MK Dons…
Evans said, “You leave the powers that be to make the decisions – it’s the Chairman who is the one who knows how long we’ve got, how long we’ve not got.”
“I said it many times, he’s been criticised many, many times in the past for keeping the purse strings tight and that includes last season under us. You just have to look at clubs going bust to show that he does it for the right reasons as he protects this Football Club like there’s no tomorrow!”
“So, we have a brilliant Chairman! I haven’t asked him, but I expect that he’ll be pretty relieved as most Chairmen will be that there is a package coming forward.”
Evans admitted that there could still be transfer business before Friday’s 5:00 deadline. “There is only one possibility,” the Gills boss told us, “it would be a permanent signing. I’ve spoken to the Chairman about it and he’s given his blessing as he was at the EFL meeting – he’s given his blessing to try and make that happen.”
“We’ll try and make it happen – if it happens it’ll be good for us, but if it doesn’t then it won’t be for the want of trying – that’s number one.”
“We’ll be one of a number of clubs trying to sign the player and if it doesn’t happen there’ll be no gripes from us as we’ve got an outstanding, talented, but very young squad in the dressing room.”
Naturally enough, the Gills boss wouldn’t name the player involved…
Turning to his attention to Saturday’s trip to MK Dons, Evans admitted, “they’ll be favourites won’t they? Have you looked at their squad? I can understand why Russell (Martin), who’s a very honest guy – I watched his interview after the Pompey defeat last week when he said he was hurting.”
“I watched the game back and I can understand why he was hurting as they did enough to win the game very comfortably. But when you can bring Scott Fraser into the building, when you can bring Cameron Jerome into the building – they’re just full of talented players, they’re a really good side. They’ll be comfortably top half of the table – that’s enough about them.”
“Every week I sit here and I say it’ll be about what we do… if we turn up and put in the type of performance that we did last week against Oxford – it may be resolute and strong, but we’ll need to do a lot more to get a lot more on Saturday.”
Team news and the Gills boss said, “the news is good; Kyle Dempsey has trained all week; Scott Robertson has trained all week; Tommy O’Connor was back in the building Thursday from international duty – he left in great shape and has come back in good shape.”
“All through pre-season and up until this week, it’s been injury after injury – not major ones other than Stuart (O’Keefe) who’s a big loss to us. It gives us options and we’ve been sitting as a group of staff saying that it’s nice to have good options rather than just options!”
“We’ve a better group than we had last year- we’ve a better squad, we have better players; the caveat that I would add to that is that we’ve got a lot of youth, we’ve got a lot of inexperience so that has to be managed – it’s to be managed as well when you have to give them a run in the side as young men, they think that’s it and they’re playing every week!”
“You may see a dip and you lose them out, then it’s that type of inside character that we have to work with them to give them maturity so that either with us for our players or they go back to their parent clubs a much more experienced and rounded player.”