Gillingham manager Steve Lovell can’t wait for the new SKYBet League One campaign to begin.

At the first of his weekly briefings, the Gills boss has told KSN that, well, he’s had enough now of pre-season and can’t wait to get started at Accrington Stanley on Saturday…

He said, “It’s been a long six weeks and in truth Saturday can’t come quick enough – the boys have worked hard and look sharp and we’re all looking forward to it as the last week has dragged a little bit.”

“We’re all excited by it; we’ve got new players who have adapted very well to our training routines.  We’re all very positive about going to Accrington and coming away with the result.”

We worked out that as a player and a coach, Lovell has been involved in around forty pre-seasons, and the Gills boss has noticed the changes.

“Pre-seasons have changed a heck of a lot since my first one as an apprentice.  There’s a lot more emphasis on the Sports Science, prevention of injury – there’s a different mentality, it’s a lot quicker and I even think it’s become more physical in regards not about people kicking anybody but, in the speed, and the strength involved in the game.”

“There’s a lot more stress put on the bodies because the expectations from everybody is higher.  I know that when we played the expectations were from individuals, but now there is a lot more put on from the Sports Science and the Psychology and all that stuff that goes with it now rather than just getting out onto the field running.”

“Everyone’s got a lot of minutes under their belts in pre-season as we doubled up on most fixtures so that everyone would get what we wanted out of it and that’s match fitness in their legs and I hope that’s what we’ve achieved.  Only time will tell, but going into the start and everyone seems ready.”

“We learned a lot from the game at Colchester last week and we’ve shown the boys this week the mistakes that were made and sometimes something like that is good that it happens so that you can work on things.”

“Going into a new season where everything is tickety-boo and lovely can sometimes work against you.  We’ve worked on things all week and hopefully we’ll be ok on Saturday.”

“We know that they will want to show that they can play in League One after winning League Two last season, and they’ve got a very good manager (John Coleman) and he knows what it takes to approach the first game of the season in a new league.”

“It’s going to be a tough ask – I think again it’s going to be tough every game for everyone as once again it’s a very tough League for everyone and every game will send out new challenges and we know Saturday is going to be a massive game for us as a group but we’re all positive as a club…”

“I’ve known and been pretty settled on the shape of things for two or three weeks now.  But we’ve still tried different systems and structures as you never know during the season when you’ve got to try and change things.  It’s been nice to play in pre-season so that if Plan A doesn’t work, we’ve always got a Plan B and Plan C or D and so on if needed!  All you can do is to prepare for the game how we want to do, which is what we’ve done and if we apply that then I’m pretty sure that we’ll be OK!”

Looking ahead Lovell admitted, “We’ve got a tough first month and we want to get as many points on the board as soon as we can.  That breeds confidence and we’ll go to Accrington and if we can get something that will lift us for the next game and that’s the way I look at it.  It’ll get to various points in the season saying this is where I’d like to finish, and this is what I’d like to do but you can’t do that at the start of a season and I never will.”

With the transfer window closing next week, the Gills boss admitted that he’s still not quite finished tinkering with his squad; “I still think we need to strengthen defensively – I think we still need a left sided defender or a left back or left wing back!  But that’s the only one really as we’ve got three centre halves at the moment and if something happens to them then we’ll be down to two, so I’ll be looking to get someone in in the next week.”