[Phil Whalley]

Originally Posted by Chimer

Anyone on here go ? Sounds like it was a dogged defensive effort, with Kenny starring, that nearly got a reward, but were Gillingham good/bad/average ? And did we look up for it ?

Hi Chris,

To answer your questions, it was frustrating having got so close to full-time to concede when we did, but the goal was the culmination of a 10-minute period when we had barely got out of our box, and were it not for a combination of poor finishing and inspired goalkeeping by Kenny, the game would have been beyond us earlier.

Gillingham looked a decent side to me, they were very committed and rarely gave us any time on the ball. There are no complaints either about Stanley’s commitment, they gave it their all and we saw some tremendously tenacious defending from the entire back-four, we were just beaten by a more creative attacking side on the day. John Mullin and Procky don’t give us much pace in the middle and we missed the attacking thrust that Craney gave us from midfield. Their No.10, Jackson, the best player on display, did exactly that for the Gills and caused us no end of trouble.

The front two of Mullin and Clarke looks potentially good if they can work out how to combine most effectively, but Clarke needs quality service, and that was lacking yesterday. Incidentally, Mullers will have been kicking himself all the way back up north yesterday as he missed the sort of chance we’ve come to expect him to put away, nodding wide when picked out at the back post, although he wasn’t able to really attack the ball.

So no real complaints about the result, just a few worries about how we are going to link midfield to attack without resorting solely to lumping it up to Mullin.

See you soon

Phil