Gillingham boss Mark Bonner insists his squad’s team spirit will only grow from here.
The Gills made it back-to-back wins at Morecambe in League 2 on Saturday with Bonner making a great start to life in the hotseat at Priestfield.
With injuries hitting hard, his players have had to dig deep in the past week and the manager has been impressed by what he’s seen.
“We’re eight weeks in I say, two weeks into the season but eight weeks as a team and maybe a little bit more as we put some things in place and spoke to some in the summer where you start to imprint what we want to be about,” said Bonner.
“The whole of the six weeks is to grow for these moments and hopefully we just keep growing and developing, and finding ways of winning games.
“Hopefully in the end we find a way of winning them the way we want it to look all the time. But we have to be humble enough to know it doesn’t work like that. This league is really tough, games are really narrow and close, and you’ve just got to find ways to win them.
“Days like Saturday build on the spirit that you’ve got. I said a couple of weeks ago we think we’ve got a good group of lads where there’s a good dressing room and a good team spirit where people get one well and challenge each other and train properly but I think there’s another level to go definitely in all of those areas. They only build on days like Saturday and get tested on days like Saturday.
“The good thing is everyone in the dressing room thinks we can be better and while we’ve got that mentality, because that’s true as well, that gives us lots to work on in the next few weeks.”
A clean sheet and three points away from home is satisfying for any manager.
While Bonner would prefer to win every game comfortably, he is realistic to know that sometimes you can’t get beat a one-nil win on your travels.
“When it comes in all the circumstances (it has), it’s a great way to do it,” said Bonner.
“When players come off the bench to make an impact, it is a satisfying result. Some say the most satisfying but I’m not so sure.
“I think I’d rather win comfortably but it was certainly a good way to win a game (at Morecambe) and they gave us a really good game. It was tough, we knew it would be and we found a way to get it over the line.
“Just gritting the game out and finding a way to win it (pleased me most). We got better as the game went on, it wasn’t a beautiful game by any stretch of the imagination and there were performances that I think were under par for what we want and where we want to be.
“But that can’t be the story. At this stage where we are building a team, trying to get players fit, and trying to develop our way of doing things. If we can develop that while winning it becomes a lot easier because people are confident.
“The focus isn’t on us so much and there’s less pressure on us to do that. It helps us keep building.”
