Gillingham winger Jack Nolan isn’t putting any pressure on himself to replicate his wonderful season with Accrington.
The 23-year-old joined the Gills in the summer from their League 2 rivals after netting 17 goals and providing nine assists for Stanley last term.
He’ll be happy with anywhere near that return this time around but Nolan isn’t thinking about the big picture just yet.
“At Accrington I had a couple of years where I wasn’t playing regular games and playing regularly definitely helped me,” reflected Nolan on last season.
“It built my confidence up and proved to me that I was good enough to play at the level. With the numbers, it’s being in the right place at the right time.
“I like to cross a ball which is always going to help out with assists and with goals it’s being in and around it. Quite a lot of the time the ball fell in the right place for me.
“I’ll be trying to replicate that this season but not really getting too carried away with that and putting pressure on myself.
“You see it all the time with players, once they get one, they get two, three and so on. With me it was a bit more of that, once I got going they kept coming.
“Looking back now I got more goals than I intended to. This year if I can get to double figures I’ll be happy, if I can replicate anywhere near that number then everyone’s going to be happy.”
Nolan scored his first Gillingham goal on his debut against Carlisle on the opening day of the campaign.
He saw enough in that match to confirm that he’s made the right move.
“It’s been a breath of fresh air coming in,” he said. “We’ve started off well but it’s only two games in there’s a long way to go. The table won’t take its natural fold until November time.
“All we’re focused on is winning games, game by game, try and get as many points as we can and see where it takes us.
“For me, I just want to play games and get more experience under my belt. With that comes more goals and assists and I think the more experience I’m getting hopefully I can get into those positions.
“A big thing was ‘Is my style of play going to fit into this side?’ From the Carlisle game, we’ve seen that it does. It’s about keeping myself in those positions where I can be effective for the team and try to create goals and score them myself.”
It’s a case of so far, so good for Nolan as the Gills head to Fleetwood hoping to make it three wins out of three in the league.
“We’ve won the first two games which is, obviously, a massive boost,” he added.
“Fleetwood are a good side just coming down from League 1, we’ll aim to get three points and put a good performance in.
“It’s no secret in League 2 that a lot of teams want to try and get promoted.
“It doesn’t take an individual to do that or an 11 or 18, it takes a whole squad to go and do that.
“It’s definitely more about the team than individuals and everyone is buying into it.”
