Gillingham manager John Coleman has had words with his players following a video on social media that he admitted “doesn’t look good.”
The Gills suffered a 2-1 home loss to Fleetwood on Tuesday night, their 15th of a woeful season, and the next day a video – seen by KentOnline – shows players dancing and singing in the club’s gym.
Aaron Rowe and Shad Ogie were among the players laughing and dancing in front of the camera during a gym break. Many fans shrugged it off but others weren’t so impressed.
Coleman raised the video issue himself in Thursday’s pre-match press conference, ahead of their crunch game with Morecambe on Saturday.
He said: “(It was) recorded on Monday, but unfortunately it leaked on Wednesday, which doesn’t give a good impression of what we’re trying to do at the club.
“We’ve got players laughing and joking, probably 12- 14 hours after we’ve had a defeat at home, which we’re all hurting from.
“The players have been told in no uncertain terms that going out into social media or the public domain and people laughing and joking after we’ve got beat, it doesn’t look good.
“It’s not acceptable. But on the same token, we want people to go to the gym and work hard and enjoy that aspect.
“We’ve suffered a defeat that on Tuesday and Wednesday we were all a bit raw about it but I want the players full of confidence now going into Saturday.
“I don’t want the players with their chins on the floor and being negative. I want us to be really positive.”
Coleman had the players in on Wednesday for an indepth analysis of that Fleetwood game.
Gillingham are 19th in League 2 and haven’t won since mid-December, in need of wins to keep themselves clear of the relegation zone.
“We had a good meeting on Wednesday,” Coleman said.
“The players came in and we went through a couple of hours of the video (of Tuesday’s game), looking at areas that we did well in and areas that we definitely need to improve in.
“It was a positive meeting and we came out of that refreshed and raring to go for Saturday. That’s the message that we want to send out to the public domain.
“People can actually twist that quite easily (so I wanted to) just clarify what’s gone on and what’s gone on since.”
Coleman felt coming in on Wednesday was best, to get in some early preparation for a massive weekend game, rather than giving the players the day off.
He said: “We’ve given them days off when they’ve done well. It’s not all one way. They have had days off that they haven’t expected to have off.
“They can take it as a punishment if they want, it’s not a punishment. We had to start the focus for Saturday early and that meant doing a strip down of the whole game.
“The ball’s in play for 58 minutes but when you have to dissect it, you’re talking two and a half hours. I felt that would be best done on Wednesday.”
Gillingham take on a Morecambe team sitting second from bottom in League 2 this Saturday. Win and the Gills increase the gap on the relegation places to 12 points, lose and it’s only six.
