Gillingham complete their pre-season campaign at Dartford on Saturday and emerging from it unscathed is manager Gareth Ainsworth’s main aim.
Ainsworth and the backroom team have been negotiating a host of knocks and niggles through pre-season but the manager’s so far got more players available now than he did when pre-season started.
The Gills boss had seven of his professionals unavailable for their pre-season opener at Dover on July 7 and appears in much better shape ahead of their trip to Ady Pennock’s Dartford this Saturday.
Ainsworth was hoping to have Sam Gale back training ahead of that match, after the young defender has sat out the last three matches, limited to just two 45 minutes of action so far.
The manager has made it clear that summer signing Sam Vokes won’t be fit for the start of the season while winger Aaron Rowe hasn’t made an appearance either.
Josh Andrews took a whack late on against Ebbsfleet but his substitution was pre-planned and the manager wasn’t concerned about the striker’s status post-match.
Jonny Williams missed the opening two games of pre-season but was full of running at Ebbsfleet and lasted 75 minutes, captaining the side on the night too.
Elliott Nevitt and Nelson Khumbeni both got 45 minutes after missing the opening weeks of pre-season action.
Looking ahead to the final pre-season test, Ainsworth said: “I’ll be really happy after Dartford. No injuries, plenty of fitness in the boys. Give me next week, any day.
“We’re going to have a good go at them but it all counts on August 2nd, that’s when it counts.
“Don’t worry about anything. I’ve been in teams that haven’t won in pre-season and we were top of the league after seven games.
“I’m not saying that’s going to happen but pre-season doesn’t mean a great deal.
“I’m pleased where we are as a group.
“I just want to get stuck into Accrington [on the opening day of the season], preparing for them, going up there night before, as a team, as a unit and hopefully starting the season well.”
Gillingham’s pre-season so far;
Dover 0 Gillingham 1
Gillingham 0 Reading 0
Southampton 4 Gillingham 1 (Two 60-minute games)
Gillingham 0 Luton 2
Ebbsfleet 2 Gillingham 1
A few goals at Dartford wouldn’t hurt. The Gills won 4-0 there last season.
Joe Gbode’s the only striker to register a goal in pre-season so far but Ainsworth’s confident goals will come and was happy with the forwards in their midweek game at Ebbsfleet.
He was full of praise for big man Andrews and added: “Seb Palmer-Houlden showed again what he’s got and Joe Gbode scored a fantastic goal.
“We’re going to be a threat, there’s still some things to work on, that we will work on.
“We’re going into individuals now rather than team shape and team performance because I thought that was very good.
“The amount of second balls we landed on, the amount of forward play we had, I was very pleased and looking forward to the next game now.”
Ainsworth’s used 28 players over pre-season including trialist left-back Lenni Cirino. The former Blackburn youngster has featured heavily but not announcement has yet been made over whether he’s getting a contract at the club.
The Gills boss was set to use tonight’s (Friday’s) game at Chatham to play a lot of the fringe players, including promising forward Damien Theodore, and there will be discussions now about sending some of them out on loan.
Ainsworth said: “We will start whittling the squad down to see who’s going to make an impact in League 2 this season because 29 is too much for me. Some will go out and get experience on loan. Some will be on standby.
“I won’t have 10 players in the stand watching every Saturday. No chance. That’s not fair on the boys. Maybe one or two and that’s it.
“Everyone will be able to smell the first team this year. Everyone will want to play in this first team. Hopefully this first team will be successful.”
