When Gillingham boss Steve Lovell spoke to KSN before Saturday’s visit to the Medway Priestfield Stadium of Coventry City, unsurprising a lot of the chat was dominated by Wednesday’s incredible home defeat by Sunderland.
Lovell told us, “Apart from the four goals, Tomas hasn’t had a shot to save. It’s just frustrating and disappointing that they got their fourth goal so much against the run of play in the second half. If we could have nicked one before they scored, we may have even got something out of the game.”
“They’re showing the intent here to entertain and you want to do it in the right way, but there have been times when we’ve left some gaps at the back which we’ve spoken to them about and make sure that we change that and not to commit too many men forward when we should be defending!”
Looking to the weekend and the visit of Coventry, Lovell admitted, “they’ve had a couple of poor results lately and we’ve got to make sure that we’re ready for them when they arrive on Saturday.”
“We’ll go about our business as we have done in our first four games we should be OK. Even though we’ve lost the last two games, I don’t think we’ve played badly in any of our games so far.”
“We won’t be changing things for the sake of it. There are players who aren’t playing at the moment, who are disappointed, but they are going to have to wait and will have to wait until I think that they’re ready to get back in.”
“The way that the boys have been playing, those who aren’t will literally have to wait their turn, as it’s only fair to keep them in the team.”
“Failing that, they wait… Hoping Josh Rees will be back in contention for Barnsley next week and Dean Parrett will be the following week against his old club AFC Wimbledon.”
Lovell then spoke about the Priestfield atmosphere on Wednesday. “We made the crowd cheer the other night and generate the incredible atmosphere and we’ll be looking to do that again, to get them behind us again like that, by playing as well as we did on Wednesday.”
“If we don’t, we don’t deserve and won’t get it. It’s completely down to us and the way that we play and if we do play well, we’ll get that atmosphere back again and that’s what we all want – to make this place a fortress again!”
“It was nice for the players to play in front of support like that and I do think that our support was louder than Sunderland’s for most of the game and that show how much of the game we had and how many chances we had!”
“To get so much out of Wednesday and still lose 4-1 is what’s disappointed me more than anything else. We could have easily got something out of the game – a draw or even maybe a win!”
“The opportunities we had created with the keeper making all the saves he did and the blocks that came in, they didn’t have any of them and two of the goals at least were mistakes. You can’t give the best teams in the League a leg-up, you really can’t! That’s something we have to take out of the game.”
“Gillingham supporters have always been noisy – they like to be entertained. It was a shame that we can’t get that every game, but if we start getting a few results here and why can’t we have atmospheres like that every week and people will come back.”
“If we’re playing entertaining football, I genuinely believe they will come back. But all I’m concerned about are the supporters that are here now and they’re doing great for us.”
“They’ve been entertained and given us fantastic support and we all appreciate it. You don’t realise that for a lot of the team out there, Wednesday was possibly the biggest game that they’ve played in – you don’t realise that!”
“It’s only when you think that they haven’t played against that sort of level you realise it’s an experience that they’ll learn from an do no harm going forward in their career. And when you think how many positive performances we had on Wednesday, that can only be good for the whole group!”