Gillingham return to League action today after three wins in a week at Priestfield has seen progress in the FA Cup and movement up League One and most importantly of all without conceding a goal!
When the Gills boss spoke to KSN this week ahead of Saturday’s trip to face AFC Wimbledon, he was still naturally buoyant after Tuesday’s Emirates FA Cup triumph over Sunderland.
“Very pleased, but not with the first half if I’m honest as I thought we went direct too early and got involved in a slog with Sunderland rather than playing the way that we like to play,” the Gills boss told us. “I was really delighted with the boy’s reaction in the second half – in extra time I thought we were outstanding and could have scored three or four. Our fitness levels were terrific; the boys bounced back in afterwards – and I thought that the support as ever here at Priestfield was outstanding!”
The Gills go into Saturday’s game on the back of those three home wins, but the boss was keen to focus on the clean sheets. He said, “Three clean sheets are the foundation to any run – stop conceding goals. I think most of the season we’ve been good at that! We’ve always said that we have to earn our clean sheets and to be in any sort of position to challenge that top group, you need fourteen or fifteen clean sheets so we’re a little bit away from that yet but we’re getting there.”
AFC Wimbledon provide the opposition on Saturday, with Evans knowing a fourth win in a row for his side could have the Gills in the top half of the SKYBet League One table for the first time this season, though Evans admitted,
“Kingsmeadow is always a tough place to go – they’ve had a change of management too of course and it’s a shame that I’m not having a glass of wine or beer with Wally Downes afterwards, but that’s football. But the new mans gone in and put his own stamp on things – I know that they haven’t won in six and stats don’t lie, but they’ve had some very close encounters in there with a couple of draws – but make no mistakes, they’re a good side with some good players – its got the hallmark to be a good game of football on a good pitch as well. I’ve seen some video footage recently of their new ground that is being built at Plough Lane which is fantastic and I’m sure that they will be comfortably in League One and challenging like the old Plough Lane club used to!”
Then we turned to the all-important team news. The manager told us, “I think (Mikael) Mandron will be missing – he’s come back into the building not feeling quite right with a bug or a virus, but we’ll have kept an eye on him. Stuart O’Keefe and Alfie Jones are struggling as well with knocks they picked up on Tuesday – that then stretches us completely as we’ve only got eighteen or nineteen to pick from, but we do get Tommy O’Connor back from international duty with the Irish under 21s – two games capped which is great as he was a million miles away from that when he first came here. He’ll then compete for a place with the decision being between him and Jack Tucker.”
“We could have Matty Willock on the bench which will be a huge decision… We won’t be increasing the numbers in January and so it will have to be almost on a one out situation to free the funds up to do the bits and pieces that we want to. I’m already speaking to some other managers as to what we can do – the Chairman’s ticked all the boxes so far but of course theres a lot of work to be done between now and then to allow us to get some players in and that gives the boys who we have got another two or three weeks to say to me that I should really have be in your starting side! But come January the objective without doubt is to strengthen what we already have – keeping the best of what we’ve got here – and we may surprise a few!”