Time off can wait for Gillingham’s players – that’s the message from boss Mark Bonner.
The Gills have enjoyed a positive start to their League 2 campaign but Bonner isn’t ready for the players to start taking it easy.
It’s been a full-on start and Bonner expects it to stay that way, for now.
He said: “The lads are desperate for some more days off at the moment, but I’m killing them a bit because we’re just cracking on.
“At the minute I’m a bit of a Scrooge. We’re trying to develop a real resilience, a real togetherness, an incredible work ethic and so we have to work our way towards that. That’s the first side of that.
“The second side of that is we’re trying to get better as well and we can’t do that sat at home.
“They’re going to have to stick with it for a little bit and they’ll get their time back with me over the season, no doubt.”
Bonner’s methods are working so far.
Four wins from their opening six league matches leaves them heading into the weekend second in the table. They travel to leaders Notts County this Saturday.
“Excellent,” grinned the manager, having just beaten Tranmere 3-0 at home and asked about their next match.
“A blockbuster on week six of the season!”
League 2 table – top 10
Positions in the league table aren’t at the forefront of Bonner’s mind – constant improvement in his team’s performances are.
He said: “I’m just going to keep encouraging them to keep being the best version of themselves.
“I’m really enjoying working with them because they want to get better and, most importantly, when the chips are down and it’s hard, they roll their sleeves up and have a scrap. That’s the best quality you can want in your team.
“I love the energy that we played with at the start of the game (on Saturday) and we had some good, confident moments with the ball.
“The bits I love are just such qualities that are going to serve us well. The togetherness that’s building in the team, the spirit when it goes against you, the counter-attacking qualities when we need it.
“We don’t want to be a counter-attacking team, but we want to be amazing at counter-attacking. We did that very well (against Tranmere).
“There were pockets in the game where we played some good football and progressed the game nicely as well and pockets in the game where we had to defend well and bits that we’ll pick up and think we can do a bit better.”
The Gills overcame Tranmere with 10 men for the final half hour. Ethan Coleman’s second yellow card in the match means he’ll miss the trip to Notts County as he serves a one-match suspension.
Bonner said: “It was a tough day physically and the lads were flagging a little bit, but they dragged themselves through a 100-minute game and did it brilliantly.”
Gillingham are expected to be well backed again on their travels.
The Gills quickly sold out their initial 398 ticket allocation for the game, prompting the Nottingham club to release another 652 for sale. A decision on whether tickets will be available on the day is expected to be made on Friday.
