Gillingham manager John Coleman admitted they didn’t deserve anything out of Saturday’s game against Notts County.
The Gills were beaten 2-1 by Notts County, scoring late in the second half after attempting to fight back from a two-goal deficit in the first.
Report: Gillingham 1 Notts County 2
Reacting to the loss, Coleman said: “I’m disappointed and apologise to the fans for the first-half performance.
“We started the game brightly and could have scored after a couple of minutes. I thought it was Even Stevens until about 17 minutes when they scored.
“After they scored we were terrible. There’s no excuse for that. We lost heart, we lost passion and we lost drive.
“We had got away with it (before the goal) when Glenn made a decent save and then we conceded from the corner, which is poor.
“Then we conceded a horrific second goal, which was a good finish by David McGoldrick, but calamitous from our point of view.
“We’re asking the players to inspire the crowd and you’re not going to get inspired by that.
“We had a determined game plan, they were clever enough to get around the press by pulling a couple of players wide, or doubling up on the wide areas, and we never got to grips with it, or we quickly lost the desire to press.
“We looked as though it was going to work in the first 10-15 minutes, after that we were all over the place, and there’s no excuse for that.
“People will say ‘it’s a spirited show second, half much better’ and yes we were much better second half but were they coasting? You don’t know either way do you do?
“There was a little bit more effort, we played the game higher up the pitch, which is a big thing, but I’m not going to sugar coat it and say it was a spirited performance, we were unlucky and all that.
“We didn’t deserve anything from the game, I don’t think, and I don’t think it would have needed much more to have got something out of the game.
“At this moment in time we can’t find any rhythm, we’re not capable of building sustained attacks, keeping teams under sustained pressure.
“Fans did get behind us in the second half as well, but we’re not doing it anywhere near enough. We’re a soft touch.
“We’ve got to start passing the ball. Our passing has got to improve dramatically. We’re giving the ball away in needless areas, putting the ball out of play in needless areas.”
Coleman’s taken charge of four games, with draws at Tranmere and Grimsby but home defeats to Doncaster and now Notts County.
The manager said: “We’ve got to understand why we are doing whatever we’re doing on the pitch and the consequences of when you’re doing a high press how it falls down if two or three don’t press.
We’ve got to understand the importance of winning games of football and we’ve got to understand the importance of a game of football to our fans.
“At this moment in time I think that’s gone way beyond our players at the moment. I don’t think they understand the duty that they’ve got to the fans to perform and give it their all.
“There was some decent performances out there, individual performances, but not enough.
“I think they’re a nice set of lads, I don’t think there’s any malice in them, but we need more fight, we need more get up and go.
“That’s what I’ve been brought in to do. I’ve got to start doing it quickly and we will continue to try and do that.
“I was really annoyed at the fact that we’re going into the game underdogs, when we’re at home, we shouldn’t be underdogs to any team at home.
“People are expecting us to get beat and I think some of our players are expecting us to get beat and that’s wrong.”
