With just five games left to go in their season, Gillingham head to Oxford United on Saturday knowing probably only a win will do to keep their play-off hopes alive.

Last weekend’s 0-0 draw with Shrewsbury Town off the back of the 4-1 loss at Blackpool has seen the Kent side’s hopes all but dashed of making it into the top six and will go into the game sitting tenth in League One, six points behind Portsmouth who sit in the final play-off place.

A loss on Saturday evening and that will most likely end Gillingham’s hopes of playing anything other than the five remaining games this season.

Oxford United go into the game on a rich vein of form and Gills manager Steve Evans knows his side will be in for a real test against a team that sits seventh and have play-off ambitions themselves:

“If we can go there, and I believe we can, win, we are on level points with Oxford with 4 to go. It’s incredible. Heart, desire, commitment and passion has to all be delivered, and then the ability has to come out. We need five big performances.” said Evans.

“We have to work extremely hard at Oxford and execute our plan. We have a lot of respect for the opponents.”

“Training has been of a real high quality. We are ready now, but we will work on the plan that we have to work on to be ready for Oxford on Saturday evening.”

“We will approach the game in the same fashion as any other. We will have a plan and we know we will need to be at our best to get something from Oxford, who have an outstanding squad in place.”

Evans must decide whether to keep faith with the side that drew with Shrewsbury Town or take a gamble and go with a more offensive line up.

Should he decide to do the latter, Evans could start with Olly Lee who has had to settle for a place on the bench in recent weeks, whilst striker Dominic Samuel could start in place of John Akinde who has struggled in recent weeks.

Whoever starts come 5:30pm on Saturday, Gillingham know their season could well be over realistically just a few hours later. Hopefully that will be inspiration enough to come back to Kent with all three points.

Picture supplied by Gillingham Football Club.