Gillingham manager Mark Bonner saw plenty in their FA Cup defeat to know brighter days are just around the corner.
The Gills held their own against League 1 Blackpool, whose finishing in front of goal ultimately proved the difference between the sides at Priestfield.
Bonner’s men are unlikely to come up against many sides with that quality in League 2.
It means it’s now seven games without a win but Bonner doesn’t have that negative given where Blackpool are on their journey under new boss Steve Bruce.
“Everybody else feels it’s another one but we shouldn’t expect to be better than them or to beat them because they’re miles ahead of us,” explained Bonner.
“We’re a middle of League 2 team trying to chase to be a promotion-chasing play-off team, and they are, I think, a play-off chasing team in League 1 with bags of quality in their team.
“That creates your expectation, it doesn’t mean you can’t beat them, you can’t compete with them as we have definitely competed with them and actually we should have taken a better result out of that game.
“I’m not sure it makes it worse because of the run (of poor form), it just makes it worse because we’re out of the cup. We didn’t play like we were stressed in the game at all, last week at Swindon we played stressed, we played free (on Saturday).
“The skill is taking that into next week. The edge and the atmosphere in training this week has been very good, the work in training has been very good, the players have had meetings and we’ve had meetings where we’ve talked about that but it can’t last three days. That has to last consistently all the time and you have to do the right things on the horrible days when you feel a bit sorry for yourself – and it’s easy to.
“But that won’t get us results. We’ll take some positives out of the game, we can’t pat ourselves on the back for losing regardless of who it is because on your day if you’re good enough you can beat anybody – this competition shows that all the time.
“We were good in periods but we weren’t good enough and that’s the gap we’ve got to bridge as that’s been the story in the last few weeks for us.”
Gillingham again opted for a three-man defence and while they threw bodies forward in the second half, introducing Joe Gbode, Marcus Wyllie and then Josh Andrews as they tried to find an equaliser, they couldn’t create enough clear-cut openings against a robust Blackpool outfit.
“We’ve done something different again, we’re trying to change things and in lots of areas of our game it’s worked for us,” added Bonner.
“We haven’t quite had that last bit in the final third. We’ve created some chances but it’s what’s the quality of those and how many do you make? It’s unlikely we’re going to have 20 amazing chances on goal, that’s quite tough to do, but there were parts of that that were good.
“The obvious thing is we haven’t had much consistency in teams. We’ve got a few attacking players that aren’t at their best at the moment or aren’t available at the moment and that’s just the reality of it. But there was stuff to like in the game.
“The only way that we’ll turn that is by keep performing, sticking through it. I almost don’t attach that to the run, even though it is, because we’ve played against a team from a higher league that are better and they’ve shown that in moments.
“We’ve got some decent players, if they stick with it they will turn it around and get some decent results because that’s how it works. You can’t be a team that gets wins and then all of a sudden are incapable of getting them – that’s a nonsense logic.
“We’ve lost a game to a good side in League 1, we’ve been really competitive in the game, we haven’t quite done enough to get through which would have been lovely for us all but that’s where we are.”
