Gillingham manager Gareth Ainsworth is determined to help the club avoid making the same costly mistakes in the transfer market this summer.
The Gills will have to offload a sizeable number of players to thin out a squad of over 30 professionals, and Ainsworth has warned fans that they won’t be making a huge number of new additions.
Gillingham ended the season with a 1-0 win at promoted Port Vale, and Ainsworth said: “We’ll be busy at work trying to add some to the squad, but I don’t need too many.
“It’s not the players, the players aren’t bad, whatever it is, it seems to have clicked at the moment, they’re all buying in, and we will get better and better.
“I don’t make wholesale changes anyway, the only time I’ve done it was my second season at Wycombe when we almost went out of the Football League. There was a lot of mess there, there wasn’t a lot of money and we had to change a lot.
“I don’t have to change too much here. Don’t expect ten new faces in the summer, it’s not going to happen.
“The club’s spent a lot of money trying to make things right (previously) and do it one way, it’s not going to happen. We’re going to do it a proper way.
“We’re going to have identity and a structure. I want to add to the squad, not change the squad.
“There’ll be a couple of casualties, contracts are up, and I need to make space and there’s a couple of things I want to do through my experience.
“I want everyone knowing that when they come back at the end of June it will be hard work because we need to get ready for a better season than we’ve had this year.
“The club cannot keep spending money like it’s been doing. We have to have some sort of structure, some sort of financial structure as well as football structure and do it the right way.
“I don’t expect, and I’m not going to demand, that we spend lots and lots of money because it’s been done to (owners) Brad and Shannon (Galinson) and it’s not worked. Mistakes have been made. It’s spending it the right way and it’s doing it the right way. They’re fantastic.”
Gillingham finished 17th in the League 2 table but Ainsworth has raised expectations for 2025/26.
The Gills finished the campaign 12 unbeaten, with three wins from their last five games.
Ainsworth said: “I come in and do my thing, I don’t want to look back and see what’s gone wrong, I come in and do my thing and with (assistant manager) Dobbo I believe we’re organised, we get players full of energy.
“We have a structure and I think they’ve been crying out for a little bit of that when I came in, and that was really nice to hear, so we’ve given that but they’ve bought in, they’re good players, they really are.
“They’re fit, they’re strong, I’ve got brilliant staff with me. I don’t want to be changing anything like that, I want to be moving forward and adding to this group, which I believe is in a false position in the table.
“I’ll stick to the rhetoric, in two year’s time we’ll be a hell of a lot better than we are right now – I guarantee that.”
