Such is the young age of Steve Evans Gillingham squad this season that there will surely be times when the Scot will almost feel more like a head teacher than a football manager in the coming weeks and months.

And with his side in the middle of arguably their toughest run of fixtures thus far, after already playing Oxford United, Portsmouth and Fleetwood Town in the past fortnight.

The Gills next fixtures see them cross paths with Ipswich Town, Sunderland, Lincoln City and Charlton Athletic in the next weeks meaning that the young Gills literally have to learn on the job and quickly.

Speaking to KSN, the Gills boss told us, “I was fortunate to get into some games at the end of the Championship season as I know a lot of managers and sat there with my mask on and the statistics will tell you that there were more away wins than ever before, it neutralises events and so it does become more unpredictable and inconsistency in results.

“Who’d have thought we’d be comfortably above Oxford at this stage of the season – you wouldn’t have thought normally that that would be possible!”

There’s been plenty of discussion over the “learning curve” that Evans’ young side are currently on, and the manager conceded that a big step forward for them would be to play in front of a home crowd – he said.

“I think the crowd would be so helpful as we’ve got supporters who are very knowledgeable people and we’ve a team of young men who are representing their club – not Paul Scally!

“But from our point of view, we said when we were putting the squad together that we wouldn’t see the best of the squad until January or February.

“Their bodies are going through that extra mile compared to under 23 academy football when no one goes over the half way line till they’ve played a hundred and ten passes to competitive football when you can see the likes of Ipswich, the likes of Sunderland, the likes of Hull and Portsmouth against us last week where it goes long very quickly to the centre forward who links the play and it’s a very, very physical environment!”

“All the “senior” boys we’ve got in here are brilliant with the kids – we don’t get into the kids in a real difficult way. We’ve always said that we would tell them honestly – if there are mistakes we’ll point them out and then we tell them how we think they should have done it and what they could have done to prevent the mistakes!

“And then we see if they educate themselves because ultimately in football, they need to educate themselves and we’ll see if they educate themselves if they make the same mistakes many more times!”

“We’re in a good place with the young players, they’re learning their trade and some of them will go onto to play many, many games at a real high level and they’ll realise that they learned most of what they will take into those experienced careers here.”