Gillingham skipper Gabriel Zakuani is keen on an extended run in this season’s Emirates FA Cup.

It’s been well documented that boss Steve Lovell sent some of his squad home in a bid to shake things up a touch, which at first glance with six points taken from a possible nine since, seems to have done what Lovell had hoped it would.

But how did Lovell’s actions go down in the dressing room?

“Maybe not as a shock as the results were going against us,” admitted the skipper, “but as the Gaffer, he’s paid to do these things and has to make tough calls and he was just doing his job. And we got a reaction out of it, and he’ll definitely get the thumbs up from me, as he did the right thing by it and he deserved the reaction that he got out of the players.”

“Everyone respects him – there’s no ill feeling, no bad blood, what he did was the right thing and he did it the right way in my opinion.”

“I’ve seen it enough times in my career that sometimes things need to happen regretfully and people react different ways and fair play to everyone that they’ve reacted the way they did and the changing room is buzzing again, that we’ve got the two wins to move us up the table and give us a bit of a breathing space so that we can enjoy our football again!”

Turning his attention to this weekend, Zakuani said, “The cup has been good to me in the past. You have ups and downs, but you just need to approach it right.”

“I’ve been on both ends of what the Cup can do for you – when you’re the underdog and win a game like this, it’s terrific, but when the boot’s on the other foot it’s horrible. We need to make sure we are at it from the off as they will come and make it tough for us.”

“The crowd expect us to win and we need to make sure our mentality is right. On Tuesday it just didn’t fall for us, but we remain confident. We know we can score goals – Connor’s (Ogilvie) hit the bar early on and we should have got something out of the game.”

“I think it’s a welcome break from the League to be honest – it’s something else to focus on and get out of it what we can, and I think a break from the League at the moment, when we’ve had a lot of games recently, is also a good thing as its been gruelling and we’ve had a lot of downs and ups recently.”

“So playing in the FA Cup and hopefully get through will bring us even more confidence to take into the League games we’ve got coming up.”