Gillingham manager John Coleman admits he’d accept the team being vulnerable at the back if it means they’re more potent in attack.
Coleman’s trying to get the Gills out of a rut and feels the best way to do that is by scoring goals – something they’ve struggled with for the last two and a half seasons.
The Gills head to Tranmere Rovers tomorrow (Saturday) without a goal in their last four games and without picking up a point. Coleman’s first game in charge last weekend ended in a 1-0 defeat to Doncaster Rovers.
Coleman said: “The lack of goals is the big thing. It’s something we’ve got to focus on.
“That might mean persevering with two up front and maybe making ourselves a little bit vulnerable, but hopefully making the opposition a bit more vulnerable as well.
“I’d like us to score goals, and I think we’ve got to get that psychological barrier out of our way by scoring a goal. The sooner we do that, the better.
“Let’s make no bones about it, (we’re in) a rut and the fans are feeling that rut as well. We’ve got to get out of that as quick as we can.
“This is a wonderful club. The team aren’t performing at the levels that this club has provided for them. I wouldn’t say it needs a saviour, but it definitely needs a change of impetus.
“I think the whole place and the fans need a feel-good factor. You can get that with a couple of goals. But they need a lift, everyone needs a lift and hopefully we can give them that lift.
“If you reflect back to last Saturday’s game, we started really bright. We don’t score, we concede an absolute calamitous goal and it saps the energy out of the fans, let alone the players.
“The fans can be forgiven for going: ‘Oh, here we go again. Same horse, different jockey.’
I’m trying to say, ‘well, it’s not going to change overnight’ but really, it has to change overnight. It has to change quite quickly. We have to get ourselves so we look more of a threat.
“We’ve got to get people into the box, we’ve got to make things uncomfortable for the opposition. I think we did that to a certain extent last Saturday.
“I’d like to see us be a bit more of a threat, and that’s something that we’ve worked on this week and we’ll continue to work on.”
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The immediacy of what the Gills need to do isn’t lost on Coleman. He’s asked for fans to keep the faith but knows there’s a trade off between patience and getting results.
He’s confident he can turn things around and has 22 games left, now with a 12-point gap to make up on the play-off places ahead of this weekend.
“Talk’s dead cheap,” he said.
“Every manager can waffle on about what we’re going to do and what style of football they’re going to play and what ethos they’re going to play. At the end of the day, it gets delivered on the pitch.
“We have to get into the opposition’s territory more. We have to get into the opposition’s box more. We have to have better control. We have to make better crosses and we have to make better shots.
“There’s lots of different facets. Eliminating silly mistakes is a big help, but not just the goal (conceded against Doncaster). There’s no-one who was more disappointed than (Armani Little] for that.
“A ball rolls under your foot and quickly an attack becomes defence. Silly things that can be ironed out and have to be ironed out. The better players don’t make mistakes as often as the players who aren’t so good.
“A lot of it is decision making. The top players make the best decisions quicker than anybody else. That’s what makes them the top players.
“We’ve got to persevere, but we’ve got to show that we mean what we say.”
