Jack Nolan had his best season yet while playing under John Coleman and is excited for the rest of the season now they’ve been reunited at Gillingham.
It’s a fresh start for the winger, who admits he’s not reached his best levels since a summer move to the Gills, but is now playing for a manager he knows can get the best out of him.
It was while playing at Accrington last season, mostly under the management of Coleman, where Nolan ended the campaign with 17 goals and nine assists.
The first half of this campaign hasn’t got close to that, netting just once in 27 appearances, but the 23-year-old admitted his confidence has been “shot to pieces.”
He knows Coleman can be the one to get him back to his best.
Nolan said: “John and Jimmy (Bell, the assistant boss) got the best out of me. There was a lot of tough love and I won’t shy away from that. That got me ticking, that worked.
“I have no doubt that other players in the squad will be able to get going and get us firing on all cylinders.
“It’s not going to be an overnight success but hopefully, within the next few weeks, you’ll start to see the way they want to play and their philosophy coming through in the way we play.
“I know I’ve not been at my (best( level, I can admit that, but I know it’s there and I’ve just got to try and get my confidence back. We are all low on confidence, I think that’s quite clear to see.”
Nolan spent three years at Accrington after Coleman signed him from Walsall. He’s played more minutes under the new Gills boss than any other manager.
It wasn’t an instant success, however.
“When I first went to Accrington I wasn’t playing week in, week out,” he said.
“A lot of that was down to him with me and obviously trying to fit into that system that he wanted to play. It all clicked last year and a little bit of the season before, towards the end.
“He’s a good man manager. He knew what made me tick. That might have been a boll**king or an arm around your shoulder but he got the best out of me and other lads.
“He’s seen lads go on from Accrington and do well, hopefully he can bring that here.
“That (last season) was my best. I think that put a lot of pressure on me coming here to try and replicate that. It’s not gone the way I wanted to or anyone wanted to.
“Obviously one season doesn’t really define you but it’s always in there.
“I don’t really believe there’s such a thing as a one-season wonder. I think if you can go and do it one season, you can definitely go and do it again.
“For me, I’ll be honest, my confidence is shot to pieces. I need to get my confidence back and then hopefully that will get the best out of me and also for the team.”
While happy to see Coleman back in work at the Gills, Nolan wasn’t pleased to see former manager Mark Bonner and assistant boss Anthony Hayes pay the price for their under performances by getting the sack.
“I was gutted,” he said. “He brought me to the club. He wanted to move the club forward and that was something that I really bought into.
“We have to take responsibility as well as players. We’ve probably not performed as well as we should have, or as well as we could have.
“There’s a lot of factors to that, one of them being confidence.
“We knew results weren’t where we wanted them to be.
“Sunday was a bit of a surprise, with the timing, but that’s football. Mark and Hayesy are brilliant blokes, brilliant coaches, and Mark’s a brilliant manager.
“I have no doubt they’ll go on to better things and go again but for us now, obviously, as players, we have to get behind John and Jimmy and give them our all to hopefully try and string a few results together to climb back up the table.
“You can’t change the past, you can only impact the future. Now we have to get our heads down under the new management, which could be a different style to how Mark Bonner had, and give him our all and then see where that takes us.”
The Gills are back at Priestfield this Saturday for the first time since a 3-0 defeat to Bromley – the final straw for the club’s board and a result that led to Bonner leaving.
Gillingham’s players were booed off that night and have faced plenty of criticism from fans since.
Nolan said: “ We were all brought here to try and achieve something but I think we just have to ignore the outside noise. We all see it, we all hear it.
“It’s not nice. It’s not what we want to hear. No one wants to be in that situation, as a fan and as a player, and anyone connected to the club.
“If you’re a footballer, you’ve got to be thick-skinned. People have opinions on you. You’ve got to keep your head down and just try and prove people wrong.
“We are where we are. For us, it’s a fresh start. We’ve got ability and we’ve got a talented squad.
“It’s all to play for now. There’s a long way to go, a lot of games and a lot of points to be earned.”
