Gillingham manager Mark Bonner has two players inside his camp with plenty of intel on weekend opponents Crewe.
Aaron Rowe’s injured but striker Elliott Nevitt may well be starting against Crewe. Both played at Wembley for The Alex under manager Lee Bell in last season’s League 2 play-off final.
Bonner’s side face Crewe away this Saturday and said: “They’ll be a good side with the ball, no question, and you won’t be shocked to hear I watched quite a lot of them last year and that’s a little bit why Aaron Rowe and Elliott Nevitt arrived here.
“Those two have got a bit of an idea maybe what might be to come.
“It’s helpful to try and chew their ear off and see if they can give us anything to help with what to expect in how they play, having played there before, but we want to try and be as well organised as we can be, as good with the ball as we can be, as dominant as possible.
“The last couple of games we’ve had more of the ball, we’ve just got to be as creative as we can be with it.
“It’s a nice challenge to try and get a balance between all of those. Ultimately, at the end of the game, we want to be 10 games in(to the season) with a really good points return. I guess the truth is we’ve already got that, but we want to extend it for sure.”
In the opposition side this weekend will be two of Bonner’s former Cambridge United players, midfielder Jack Lankester and forward Shilow Tracey.
Bonner said: “I know them well and look forward to seeing them. They’re doing well and obviously Elliott and Aaron are from there last season.
“It’s different times isn’t it and the two boys that played there can tell me about the team last year, I’m sure, but it’s not the same.
“You might get a little bit of something about the place, the stadium, the style, things like that, you try and fish for anything but sometimes the lads aren’t thinking about it the same way I am so we just cheers our cups of tea and move on because it’s sometimes not as good a conversation as I hope it might be!”
League 2 table ahead of the weekend;
Bonner was at Wembley to watch that play-off final, with Crawley beating Crewe 2-0, meaning another season in League 2 for The Alex.
“It was roasting hot,” Bonner recalled.
“They went behind in the game and then the game just becomes so so hard. I speak to the boys about that game quite a bit that was just a really difficult one.
“Their performance in the second leg of the semi-finals against Doncaster (overcoming a 2-0 first-leg deficit) was outstanding to get themselves there.
“Crawley had a really strong season last year, a slow first couple of games this year, but they’ve got themselves going and I think in this league, you look at the league table now and you just see so many teams within a couple of points of each other and I just think that’s League 2 and I think it looks like that until Easter.”
Crewe have had a mixed start to the season and were without a game on Tuesday, as their match at Wimbledon was postponed because the Londoners are still dealing with flood damage to the pitch and club buildings.
Saturday’s game is an opportunity for the Gills to quickly recover from their 1-0 home loss against Grimsby Town on Tuesday night.
Their only other defeat came at Doncaster and was followed by three straight wins.
Bonner said: “We’ll certainly try to reverse the result as quick as possible because the benefit to that is very good and the strength you can build as a team when you have a positive result after a negative one is very good. You never then get too downhearted by a defeat because you back yourself that you’re going to win the next game and that’s what we want to try and do.
“It’s easy to say that you need to do one game at a time but professional sports people hate to lose don’t they? You don’t want that to weigh on them psychologically.
“They hate to lose more than they love to win probably and the pain of a defeat is much, much bigger than the joy of a win, like miles bigger, and you think about it much more than a win. That’s the truth.
“The problem is when you win in sport you just have to get ready to win the next one because all you’re ever trying to do is avoid the loss because you know how bad that feels. That’s a brutal truth.
“That’s why in this game, in any sport, the resilience that you need to be a coach, player, manager is huge and that’s a good strength to develop as a team in-game, in-between games and from game to game.”
