Gillingham chairman Brad Galinson has explained the thinking behind the club’s decision to make a management change.
Head coach Stephen Clemence and his assistant Robbie Stockdale were axed on Monday and Mr Galinson – in an interview with the club – has spoken for the first time about his reasoning, a decision that came just a month after he had publicly backed his management team, regardless of how the season ended.
The Gills chairman thanked the pair for “serving the club and getting us through the season” and that they “remain terrific individuals.”
But Mr Galinson said: “It was an extremely bad day (on Monday) and an extremely difficult decision.
“The process that we went through to make that change, is that ultimately my responsibility is to the club and the community and to the fans.
“Because of the poor form we had at the end of the season, I was faced with going through the summer and going through recruitment, starting next season and if the first few months didn’t go well it is very difficult to change a manager in the middle of a season.
“Ironically, although we have been through two managers in my brief tenure here, I actually think that breaking continuity is a very damaging thing to an organisation.
“It is a last resort thing that anyone at the club, certainly me, would want to do, but the conclusion was that we’re impatient, our fans are impatient, I am impatient, the club is impatient and the expectations for promotion are strong.
“With our budget and the reality of the size of our club, we fully expect to get out of this league, as I have said many times.
“The end result was that we needed to make a change now so that the new person in charge had pre-season and very importantly recruitment time and can start the next season with that behind them.
“Because of the responsibility to the club and the expectations, we decided to make the change now rather than risk having to do it in the middle of the season.”
The club wasted no time in speaking to potential new managers.
Mr Galinson said: “We decided to make a change on Monday and we immediately put a criteria together and we targeted a very specific group of managers, all of which were interested, some actually came to us.
“On Tuesday we met three, Wednesday we met another, yesterday (Thursday) we met one.”
The interviews continued earlier today (Friday) and Mr Galinson added: “I would say the process is going well, our expectations were set early, our focus was there and we have quite a few very qualified managers to finish the process.
“The idea is to be methodical, not make mistakes, but to get it done as soon as possible so that we can continue our recruiting process which you need your leader there to do.”
Co-owner Shannon Galinson wrote on X: “I must share how incredibly inspiring it has been watching the team hard at work.
“Love seeing this club evolve into a collaborative culture where we work together towards a single goal. Good things to come.”
Gareth Ainsworth, the former Wycombe and QPR manager, has been an early favourite for the job.
Former Brentford, Rangers, Nottingham Forest and QPR boss Mark Warburton has also been heavily linked while former Cambridge United manager Mark Bonner has recently been backed with the bookies.
The Galinsons have delayed a return to the US as they oversee the interview process, along with managing director Joe Comper and director of football Kenny Jackett.
“The culture of this club is collaborative,” said Mr Galinson.
“Everyone has different perspectives, different things to offer, so the idea with that honest debate is you end up with a better result.”
Mr Galinson has said the club’s retained list is already complete, with decisions made on who is to be released and who will be offered a new deal, but the publication of that is being held back until the manager gets to give it the green light.
