Ady Pennock has praised the Gillingham players after picking up a point at Sheffield United on Saturday.

In just his second game in charge, Pennock watched on as Josh Wright scored a brace to earn a draw at Bramall Lane.

After a lacklustre performance at Oldham Athletic the week before, Pennock was pleased his players had performed well against the league leaders:

“It was great. The character that we showed was top draw. We’ve got to learn from it and enjoy it because this is a fantastic football club with some very good players. To come here and play like we did in the second half makes me very proud of them.”

“I’ve got to give every single one of them praise. This is a good result for us but we have a really big game on Tuesday [against AFC Wimbledon].”

One thing Pennock was especially pleased with, was the amount of effort put in by his players and that’s something he wants to see more of:

“I think that is the most they have ran this season, but that is what you have to do. We have some gifted players here and we definitely deserved something from the game because of our effort.”

“We defended really well, starting with Cody [McDonald] up front who worked his socks off. We had a bit of luck with the two offside goals but overall it was a very good result.”

Having signed goalkeeper Tomas Holy on Friday, Stuart Nelson’s place in the side will undoubtedly come under scrutiny, but Pennock had nothing but praise for the current custodian who pulled off a string of saves to keep Gillingham in the game at Bramall Lane:

“He was top drawer. We’ve signed big Tomas this week and it is good competition for the goalkeepers. He made two great saves first half and in the second 45 he made another three or four, but it is a team game and now we have to look forward to Tuesday.”

One big decision Pennock made as soon as coming into the club was swapping the captaincy from Josh Wright to Max Ehmer and the change seems to have reflected well on Wright who scored twice.

Without the added pressure, Wright looked a different player on Saturday and Pennock explained why he made the move:

“He has responded really well. Obviously, he lost the captaincy, and that was only because I like centre-halves being captain, but he did fantastically well today.”

Gillingham will now be hoping their game against AFC Wimbledon at Priestfield on Tuesday night goes ahead. The pitch has been under covers for the past few weeks, but with the temperature set to be below zero yet again this evening, Pennock may have to wait for his homecoming.