Gillingham face a potentially massive week as their season desperately needs an uplift and manager Neil Harris insists he is up for the challenge.

They go into the week third from bottom of the EFL but in the next seven days before the potential gateway into the Third Round of the FA Cup at Dagenham & Redbridge, the Gills face two of the sides immediately above them as on Tuesday they go to 18th placed Crawley Town for the fixture postponed following the death of her Majesty The Queen, after a trip to Wales this weekend to face 19th placed Newport County.

“The importance of these two games we’re all pretty aware of,” the Gills boss conceded. “Ultimately, we all enjoyed Brentford which was a great day out for the fans and an opportunity for me to be relaxed as the underdog; hated it against Fylde as you’re the favourite and “expected” to win and it’s never easy, but these next two games for us is why I’m involved in football – this is why I played the game.”

“Whether you’re top of the table playing second or being in the bottom reaches playing teams around you… they’re great games and this is the sort of game that I’d be excited to play in.”

“Saturday will be a physical game” Harris went on turning his attention to the weekend trip to South Wales. “They get the ball forward quickly, they’re good at restarts and have personnel that know the level and have played at the level for a long time.”

“Newport is a tough place to go but we are right up for Saturday. We’ve two away games coming up where we’ve got siege mentality and I want to see my players perform on two big occasions.”

“On Tuesday (when Harris was able to name nine subs for the Cup replay) it was great for me to turn round and actually have options both attacking and defending! I would say that it’s one of very few in twenty plus games that I’ve been able to do that in the ten months that I’ve been at the Football Club.”

“That’s the reality and whilst last season was different where we just didn’t have enough players, this year we’ve just had a hell of a lot of bad luck – it really was a nice position to be in to be able to freshen things up.”

The Gills boss wouldn’t be drawn on the availability of his squad for the weekend but did confirm that keeper Jake Turner would start as Glenn Morris was still awaiting on the result of the scan of his shoulder injury that forced him off against Northampton Town although Harris did say that the on-loan Crawley keeper was likely to be out until the New Year.