June 1st, 2019 – the day that Steve Evans officially became manager of Gillingham Football Club. A year on and the Gills boss has been talking to KSN about the first year in the Priestfield hot seat as well as his hopes for the future whenever that may be…
Evans told us, “I said to a couple of the in-house people at the Club a few days ago that it certainly doesn’t seem like a season – but I guess in reality it’s not as we’ve been robbed of it in the middle of March.”
“I think our supporters have been fantastic seeing the difference that it’s made and within the Football Club probably for the first time in many moons and many dawns, it’s got a real true professional infrastructure how things should be done and how they are done.”
“So, the Football Club is moved forward inside the building and inside the dressing room a long, long way in a short period of time. As we know there is such a long way to go if we want to be challenging that elite level to be in the Championship where I see Gillingham being in the not too distant future.”
There were many dissenting voices when Paul Scally named Evans as his manager a year ago, but the manager was used to similar comments as he explained.
“I’ve said it to KSN before and other media that it’s something that I’ve always had to do. I had to do it at Crawley and when I left there were a lot of tears; when I left Rotherham there were a lot of tears after unsurmountable success.”
“I went into Leeds – huge success from where they were and a lot of disappointed supporters, but they’ve now got where they are under just a stunning manager for me.”
“Then onto Mansfield in the bottom six of the division and I left unbeaten in twenty-three on the verge of promotion. From there it was off to Peterborough and it was well documented when I was dismissed we were in the Play Offs.”
“There have been disappointing times, but I’ve always had to go in over my career and have supporters come onside and see the hard work and see the determination, to see the fight for those clubs. And certainly from a Gillingham point of view, I’ve moved into the town, live in it, breathe it, cherish it, and as much as they may have taken to me, I’ve taken to the local people as well.”
The Gills boss then confessed that he like the rest of the Gills fans had enjoyed the recent coverage of the 20th anniversary of the Wigan Play Off win at Wembley.
Evans told us, “I think it’s fantastic at the way just this week fans have been remembering the Play Off win. I think football clubs have big moments in their history that they look back on and some will be fond memories and some will be not so good memories because there’s always been good and bad, but even I’ve been watching some of the footage of that day at Wembley; the celebrations of our Chairman, Peter Taylor and some of those players who played against my teams many moons ago – the likes of “little” Hessie, there’s many more and probably more players who contributed more!”
“It’s great to look back on those days and I’ve been watching it over the past few days with real interest and it turns hairs on your neck when you see 45,000 Gillingham fans going off to Wembley.”
As for the future, Evans explained he is already looking towards next season, whenever that happens.
“What we have to be doing now is get the decision from the EFL and if it’s about next season, let’s start to make the plans, move on the players who are not going to go on the journey with us; let’s settle down the players who are – I’ve already done a huge amount of work on players we’d like to bring into the group – whether we can get them in, whether we can afford them, whether they want to come – there’s a whole lot of conversations that have to take place but we’re in real good shape, a real good place so let’s see what all these Chairman and League One decide on Monday week.”