“Change, or we’ll change you,” was the warning from an increasingly frustrated Gillingham manager after a third straight league defeat last Saturday.
The Gills head to Bradford City this weekend – a team that have won their last two fixtures – hoping to put an end to their lousy start to October.
Mark Bonner’s men were beaten 2-1 by Accrington Stanley at Priestfield – a team who’d only previously won once in the league. That followed a 2-0 defeat at Crewe and a 1-0 reverse at home to Grimsby Town.
A usually-reliable defence have been conceding more regularly and at the top end of the pitch the goals have been hard to come by. It’s a testing time for Bonner after what had been a terrific first two months.
Directing his frustration at the players, he said: “We’re in a situation where there’s a real good togetherness in this team, there’s a real nice environment that I like, that I’ve walked into, but there’s a soft underbelly and an easiness to settle in a game.
“Settling doesn’t get you any success. That’s why it was a 12th-place finish last year.
“If we want it again, carry on as you are. If you don’t, change, or we’ll change you. Simple as that.
“I don’t want to settle. I just want to keep pushing. I want them to do better. I want them to come with us and step on. They either will or they won’t, and we will or we won’t, but while I’m here, that’s my job, to try and keep pushing it and try and encourage them.”
Gillingham’s latest results
The Gills were leading 1-0 against Accrington but allowed the visitors back in.
Bonner is keen to change the mentality of settling for 1-0 wins. He wants the players to keep pushing forward for more but it’s a change of approach that has taken time.
He said: “If they want to stick with it, and they want to push, and they want to get in this team, and they want to be in a team that’s going to drive and try and have a successful season, they’ve got to change their mentality quickly, really quickly, otherwise they won’t stick with us with what I want to do. It’s as simple as that for me.
“Don’t settle for, ‘all right, we’ve got ahead, let’s just see if we can settle on that’. It’s nonsense. You can do that, fine, but you have to have control.
“We didn’t have control. We had no control. Lost complete control in the middle of the pitch.
“We create too many situations where we allow a team back in the game and we encourage them, and that’s happened too often recently.
“Some of the ones that have been in the team consistently, some of that’s necessity, some of that’s been good performance, some of that’s been to keep giving people a chance and some of the ones out of the team are getting fitter, they’ll get their chance to come back in it.
“It definitely needs freshening up because it hasn’t been good enough.
“We’ve put ourselves under pressure with the last couple of results and if you’ve got the minerals to cope with that, great, and if they haven’t, then this won’t be for you.”
